I hadn’t, nor couldn’t, really tell anyone at
Abbey Life that I wasn’t staying, that the moment I was officially out of the
air force I was on my way. On my way
back home to Ireland, selling spectacle frames, living on a strict diet of draught
Guinness, breathing God’s fresh air and pulling lunch out of a lake, or a river,
every weekend. Abbey
Life of course had different ideas, well; when I say Abbey Life, I mean the
cretins that worked for the company. I
couldn’t believe that these people would refer to themselves as ‘professionals’,
the word had a different meaning to me.
One week training in Bournemouth, with traffic directing, mascara
wearing, Special Forces don’t tell anyone, weirdoes from all over the world,
does not a professional make. I was in
special forces for God’s sake, you never see me talk about it. In fact the most successful guy in the
Ipswich office did not know what he was doing.
I’m being serious. He wore a
brown Parka jacket, you know the ones with the fur around the hood, and he
drove a small blue moped.
I had been out and about selling a couple of
policies here and there. I took it as
quite a privilege that someone would trust you enough to give you access to
their personal finances. But I could see
that my mathematical abilities could be brought to good use and I was happy with
that. I genuinely thought that I was
doing the right thing; I was helping people and earning some money at the same
time. Abbey Life did not have the same
approach as I did. The world of
insurance, mortgages, pensions and investments is a very simple straight forward
process that is until you let people get involved. You know those types of geniuses that hang
around bars and know everything about football or trash television. I considered myself lucky enough to actually
understand the whole thing; unfortunately I was only one of a handful of people
in the country.
Life insurance is basically a bet, a gamble, a
wager. That’s all you need to
understand. Say for example you have a
standard nuclear family, mum, dad, and the two point four kids. Dad is usually the wage earner and mum stays
at home bringing up the kids. If dad is
taken out of the equation, the job of insurance is to replace his earnings, ad
infinitum in a perfect world, well; in a perfect world I suppose the dad wouldn’t
die. So if dad is earning twenty thousand
a year and the average interest rates are five percent, then you need to invest
a lump sum of four hundred thousand, so that at five percent interest, you will
get twenty thousand a year, each and every year thereafter. So, on the first day of each month, you go to
an insurance company and say, ‘I bet you that I will not die this month, what
odds will you give me?’ You say you want
a four hundred thousand pound pay out and the insurance company says that will
be seven pounds. What’s so difficult
about that?
Well the problem was that at the time the only
thing people were experts in were endowment policies, so that many people didn’t
understand that insurance was a pure and simple gamble and they expected a lump
sum at the end of the term. People would
discuss at length which company would give the best return over a number of
years, which of course was horse shit. I
came back in to the office one day and had just sold a small savings plan. It was what the client needed or best suited
their needs at that time. Jack glanced
over the paperwork. “You’ve just earned
fifty quid,” he said. “I know,” I smiled. “But if you had sold them a pension you would
have earned three hundred and fifty quid.”
“But they didn’t need a pension,” I said, to which Jack replied. “So what? Would you rather have three hundred and fifty
quid or fifty?”
Everything then fell into place for me. These ’professionals’ some of whom really didn’t
know what they were doing, were not actually trying to help people, they were
trying to line their own pockets. I was
quite embarrassed to find myself a part of such a gimmick, but knew that it was
not in my DNA to rip people off. Roll on
Ireland and the spectacle frames. Tony,
as an optician, was involved in sales, so I would often talk to him about my concerns. He explained that you had to find a balance,
that this is what business was all about.
I really couldn’t understand the concept, how could being untruthful or
conniving be acceptable? I was going into
business not politics. Life insurance
salesmen were not welcome on most military establishments and suddenly I could
see why. I was starting to feel quite
uncomfortable with Abbey Life, which is probably why they sent me off to get my
investment licence.
I know I have often said that I love
mathematics, in a nerdy sort of way, so I was looking forward to this
investment course. This was at a time
when all people talked about was investments and buying stocks and shares, I
suppose it made a change from football or the topless models on page three, but
it was just as mesmerizingly stupid. It
was also about the time that people stopped buying houses; people would now
invest in property. Of course no one
really knew what they were talking about, but as long as you wore gaudy coloured
spectacle frames, red braces, had a Filofax and spoke into a portable brick,
you were a yuppie. I refused to become a
yuppie because for a good ol boy it would be like throwing holy water in the
face of a vampire. Someone had asked to
become team leader and I had been put on their team. They were now responsible for my training and
performance. I never thought I would ever
meet someone more stupid than Joe Pearson, but I promise you this guy was.
First off, according to my new leader, I had to
buy a couple of suits, so that I would present a professional demeanour to
potential clients. People trusted
salesmen in suits; it was a part of your business armoury. Knowing how to count to ten without using your
fingers might have been better for them to concentrate on with the others and
their armouries. I was quite happy with
the way I presented myself. I had a huge,
light brown, duffle coat and a blue briefcase.
I know I looked like Paddington Bear, although to be fair, Paddington
had a blue coat and brown case, but I felt comfortable and people would never
think I was a spiv. Like Paddington, I
was a bloody foreigner; always polite, and well-meaning, with an endless
capacity for getting into trouble. But when
I opened my briefcase they knew I wasn’t pulling out silk stockings governor.
I have to admit that I felt comfortable in a
nice suit and a decent pair of shoes, but I preferred to wrap myself up in my duffle
coat. All my new leader was missing was
a ducks arse and a trilby, he already had the tie, the slicked back hair, the
Clarke Gable moustache, the suffocating suit and wet look shoes. We spent a couple of days at a hotel in
Chelmsford, studying for our investment licences, and I hated the course. The weather was extremely hot and the
instructors seemed to drone on and on. The
hardest part of the course was staying awake.
My new leader wouldn’t allow any of us to drink alcohol during lunch; he
forced us to eat solids, so it was quite a drab and serious affair.
The good news was that I passed, well, passed
with flying colours and was the highest scorer in the final exam in the
company. They had great hopes for me but
I was thinking along different lines. I
felt that the people in the armed forces were losing out, because of their aversion
to life insurance salesmen they really were missing out. But, in my opinion, their aversion was
completely validated. If only someone
could break through that barrier, if someone could come up with a plan for the navy,
army and air force, a plan that was decent and truthful and honest and put the
members of the armed forces to the fore, that person would become very successful
indeed, and simply for telling the truth.
But what sort of a person could come up with an idea like that. First of all they would have to be a bit
crazy, a bit of a maths nerd, probably have the loveliest legs in Ireland too
or something along those lines. Such a
person would have to be a fine upstanding fellow indeed. Could such a person actually exist? What do you think?
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