Read the text below in order to answer questions 16 to 18.
INSURANCE AGENTS
Insurers deliver their insurance products to policyowners primarily through independent or exclusive agents. Historically, almost all insurance agents were independent business people paid on commission. More recently, many insurance companies have adopted a system where the agent is a paid employee of the firm. These agents are referred to as exclusive agents. Economists studying the differences between these two distribution systems have long argued that the independent agency system is a less efficient method of getting the product to the customer as measured by the ratio of expenses incurred to premiums written and other statistics. But recent studie...
