Jack Kingston: “I was in the insurance business for 13 years, worked strictly on commission. I was a broker, which meant I worked for…”

“I was in the insurance business for 13 years, worked strictly on commission. I was a broker, which meant I worked for the buyer, helping them find the best quality insurance in the insurance marketplace. I also represent the entire coast of the State of Georgia. I've been involved in flood insurance and wind storm insurance and fire insurance a great deal of my adult life. So I'm very familiar with this. In fact, I'm the only CPCU in Congress, which means Charter Property and Casualty Underwriter. That's a professional designation. I know this stuff is my point. Now, what you have with the insurance business is you have two types of profits, one they make from underwriting. They don't want to insure a building if they know it's going to burn down because they won't make an underwrite profit. Fair game. They do everything they can to make sure the building does not burn down. They also make a second kind of profit called investment profit. When they get the cash flow from premiums from underwriting, they invest it and they make a lot of money in that. But generally speaking, insurance companies are risk averse. They don't want to insure wind if you're on the coast. They don't want to insure flood if you're in a flood zone. It makes sense from a business standpoint.”