I only skimmed the article. But, yes, I can well imagine insurance being a point of vulnerability.

I used to work at Aflac. I left in part because I began having nightmares that I was on a sinking ship. I was having nightmares that made me feel that if I didn't leave, the company was going to go under and my life was going to go under with it.

Part of that was that I joined at the height of their success. They were adding on to the building to move my department because we really didn't have enough space. They would give out pens and stuff at all kinds of events. They were obviously flush with cash and growing.

Shortly after I joined, the recession hit. After the addition was completed and my department moved, my department shrank in size. They had consolidated a bunch of land to add two buildings. The first one got built. The second was not started while I was there. I think it was put on hold, or possibly canceled. They stopped giving out pens at every freaking thing. I ran out of Aflac pens and had to buy my own.

They cut janitorial service. They did interdepartmental swaps on office supplies to save money. The job listings shrank from pages and pages to a few.

Etc.

Meanwhile, we were continuing to be inundated with positive PR releases. We "flew" up the Fortune 500 list. It's a relative ranking. Our valuation actually shrank. I went to meetings where the outlined how proud they were of successfully mitigating that or it would have been worse. So flying up the charts meant other companies fell like stones faster than us. They didn't really admit that part. Just lots of glowing reports about how awesome the company was.

But, I mean, it was a recession. Things were tough all over and the company was doing better than most other companies.

No, the thing that really convinced me this big company was likely in serious trouble was the Fukushima nuclear incident in Japan in 2011. [1]

A lot of people seem to have no idea, but most of Aflac's revenue is from its Japanese division. When I started working there, it was 75% of their profit. By the time I left, it was 80%, mostly because the American division was doing so poorly.

They fired Gilbert Gottfried as the voice of the duck in their commercials because he made a tasteless joke about it. I felt that was a mistake.

But more importantly they sell accident, sickness and cancer policies. Radiation can make you sick. It can even cause cancer.

It's not clear to me what their exact exposure is due to the ongoing radiation leaks in Japan from that incident. This could be a major health catastrophe for Japan and a major financial debacle for Aflac.

I've read a little about the history of the industry. Hurricane Andrew in Florida was a major crisis for the insurance industry and permanently changed it. We've had multiple serious hurricanes since then.

I don't remember the information about Andrew's effect on the industry well enough to really comment on it here. But I remember it well enough to know that a single major incident can have significant widespread impact.

With climate change, the rise of drug shortages and antibiotic resistant infections etc, there is a lot of unprecedented stuff happening. Insurance is about risk management. If you don't understand the risks involved, you can't lay odds accurately. This causes havoc in this industry.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_di...