An Insurance Agent Who Stopped Believing in Insurance

Barb Vandermeer has been selling insurance in Grand Rapids, Michigan for twenty-eight years. Her office sits in a converted Victorian on the east side, where she keeps her grandfather's underwriting manuals on a shelf behind her desk—leather-bound volumes from the 1960s that calculated risk based on assumptions that no longer hold. Last year, three carriers she'd worked with for over a decade stopped writing new homeowner policies in Kent County. This year, two more followed.

She agreed to this conversation on a Tuesday afternoon in December, between client calls. The interview subject is a composite character based on reporting from multiple insurance professionals in Great Lakes communities, though Barb herself would probably tell you she's real enough—just ask her ex-husband about the alimony payments.

You've been in insurance since the late 90s. What's changed?

Barb: God, what hasn't? Sorry, that's not helpful. Let me try again.

The fundamental thing is the same. Someone pays premium, something bad happens, we pay the claim. But the math underneath it all? Completely fucked. Sorry, can I say that? I'm saying it anyway.

When I started, we had these beautiful actuarial tables. Historical data going back decades. You could tell someone with reasonable confidence what their flood risk was, what their premium should be. It felt scientific. Solid. Like we actually knew what we were doing.

Now I've got clients whose homes have flooded twice in five years in neighborhoods that weren't even in the floodplain when they bought. The hundred-year flood is happening every three years. My grandfather's manuals might as well be fantasy novels at this point.

How do you explain that to clients?

Barb: I've stopped trying to sugarcoat it. Used to be I'd say something reassuring about how we're adjusting our models, how the industry is adapting. Professional. Calm. But now I just tell them straight: Look, the climate you bought this house in doesn't exist anymore. The climate you're insuring for isn't the climate you're going to get. I can sell you a policy, but I can't promise you it'll be affordable next year, or that the carrier won't drop you entirely.

You should see their faces.

They came in thinking Grand Rapids was safe. We're not Miami. We're not Phoenix. We're the Midwest. We're supposed to be boring and stable and fine. Except we had seven inches of rain in six hours last June.¹ My own basement flooded. I have flood insurance—of course I do, I sell the stuff—but my premium went up forty-two percent this year. And I'm in the industry. I know the wholesale pricing. It's not gouging. The risk is just real now.

What's the most difficult conversation you've had recently?

Barb: Oh God.

She pauses, looks out the window at the street.

There's this couple. Been clients of mine for probably fifteen years. Late sixties, retired, house is paid off. Dream scenario, right? Living on Social Security and a modest pension, but they're comfortable. Then their carrier non-renewed them. Not because they'd filed claims. Not because of anything they did. The carrier just looked at their zip code and said "we're out."

So they come to me, and I'm calling around trying to find them coverage. Finally get them a quote from a different carrier. Premium is literally three times what they were paying. Three times. And it's a worse policy. Higher deductible, more exclusions.

They're sitting in my office, and the wife starts crying, and she says, "We thought we'd done everything right. We saved. We paid off the house. This was supposed to be the easy part."

Long pause.

What do you say to that? I ended up helping them apply for Michigan's insurer of last resort program,² which is basically where you go when no one else will take you. And even that's not cheap. They might have to sell the house. Not because they can't afford the mortgage—they don't have one. Because they can't afford to insure it.

You mentioned you're thinking about leaving the profession?

Barb: Yeah. Some days. Most days? I don't know.

The problem is I'm fifty-four. My kids are grown—one's in Denver, one's in Minneapolis, neither wants to come back here, which, fair. I'm divorced. I've got maybe a hundred thousand in retirement savings, which sounds like a lot until you realize I've got fifteen years minimum before I can touch it without penalty.

If I were thirty, I'd already be gone. I'd retrain as something else. But what? At my age? With my skill set? I can sell insurance and I can make a pretty good lasagna. That's about it. The lasagna market is saturated.

She laughs, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes.

The really sick part is business is actually good right now. People are scared. They want coverage. They want someone to tell them they'll be okay. And I'm taking their money knowing that in five years, ten years, the whole system might collapse. Not might. Will probably collapse. You can't run an insurance market when the "once in a century" disaster happens twice a decade.

What do you mean by collapse?

Barb: I mean we're watching it happen in Florida right now.³ Carriers pulling out entirely. The state-backed insurer of last resort is underwater—pun intended. Property values dropping by twenty, thirty, forty percent when people lose coverage.

And everyone in my industry looks at Florida and says "well, that's Florida." Like it's some kind of moral failing. Like they built in the wrong place.

But we're getting the same precipitation increases they're getting.⁴ We're getting the same extreme weather. It's just slower here. Less dramatic. A flood in Grand Rapids doesn't make national news like a hurricane in Tampa. But the math is the math. If you can't predict risk, you can't price it. If you can't price it, you can't insure it. And if you can't insure it...

She shrugs.

I don't know what happens to property values, to mortgages, to the whole housing market. Nobody does. Grand Rapids has this climate adaptation plan that's been sitting in a drawer since 2015.⁵ Never implemented. Never funded. Meanwhile I'm watching the system I've spent my career in slowly realize it was built for a climate that doesn't exist anymore.

“

"You can't run an insurance market when the 'once in a century' disaster happens twice a decade."

Do you talk to other agents about this?

Barb: Not really? I mean, we all know. At industry conferences, after a few drinks, people will admit the models are broken. But during business hours, everyone pretends it's fine. Temporary adjustment period. Market correction. Whatever makes it sound manageable.

There's this guy I know—agent down in Kalamazoo—who started telling clients two years ago that they should seriously consider whether staying in their homes long-term made sense. Not because of immediate risk, but because of insurance costs and property value trajectories. You know what happened? His agency lost twenty percent of its book. People don't want to hear it. They want you to sell them the policy and tell them everything's fine.

So now I do this dance where I'm honest enough that I can sleep at night, but not so honest that I lose all my clients.

It's exhausting.

What would you do if you could start over?

Barb: Laughs. I'd be a bartender. No, seriously. You show up, you pour drinks, you go home. No one's crying in your office because they can't afford to keep their house. No one's asking you to promise them certainty in an uncertain world.

But honestly? If I were twenty-five again, knowing what I know now? I'd probably still go into insurance. Just not property and casualty. I'd do something where the risk isn't tied to geography. Life insurance, maybe. Health insurance. Something where climate change isn't actively destroying the fundamental premise of the product.

The thing is, I actually liked this job for a long time. I was good at it. I helped people. When someone's house burned down or a tree fell on their roof, I was the person who made sure they got the money to fix it. That felt meaningful.

Now I spend half my time explaining to people why their premium doubled, or why they're getting dropped, or why the coverage they thought they had doesn't actually cover the thing that just happened to them.

Are you going to stay?

Long pause. She picks up a pen, puts it down again.

Barb: I don't know. Ask me again in six months. Right now I'm just trying to get through the day, you know? Help the clients I can help. Be honest with them about what's coming, even when they don't want to hear it.

My daughter in Minneapolis keeps saying I should move up there, get a job at Target or something. Start over. But this is my town. I grew up here. My whole life is here.

And maybe that's the problem. Maybe I'm just another person who can't quite bring themselves to admit that the place they love isn't the same place anymore.

She stands up, walks to the small coffee maker in the corner.

God, that's depressing. Do you want some coffee? I make terrible coffee, but at least it's free.