Daesung Fire & Marine Insurance (3)
Kim Han-gyeol was a job seeker. Back when he'd first entered university, he hadn't worried about anything. He'd gone because everyone else went, because his high school teachers and parents told him to. He didn't really know what his dream was — he just wanted a stable life, so he went to a decent university, graduated, and ended up as an ordinary guy you could find anywhere.
"Thank you for applying... We wish you the best of luck."
The application he'd sent a few days ago had been politely rejected too. For the first time in a while, he'd actually made it to an interview and let himself hope, but what came back was a cold rejection text.
"Ugh... seriously makes me wanna kill myself."
Twelve years of mandatory education, four years of university, military service on top of that. He'd poured everything into it, and sure, it was his fault for not trying hard enough, but still — he'd been above average, and yet finding a job was shockingly impossible.
"Well, I guess. I hear even kids from good Seoul universities can't find jobs these days, so who am I?"
He sighed, unable to let go of hope, scrolling through job search apps when he stumbled upon a strange posting.
"...Huh?"
Right at the top of JobNetwork, Korea's largest employment site, was a posting with a familiar logo.
Cheonmun Fire & Marine Insurance — 1st Intake New Employee Open Recruitment
A major corporation. Sure, they'd been caught up in some nasty scandals recently, but they'd overcome it all and stood tall again.
Normally he wouldn't even wouldn't click it, knowing it was impossible for him. But this time, he clicked on the posting as if possessed.
The page loaded for a moment, and Han-gyeol's mind flashed back to the Daesung Fire & Marine Insurance incident and Cheonmun Group's acquisition process he'd seen just a few days ago. Of course, that was a story from a completely different world, a major corporation he could never get into, so he'd just thought "huh, I see" and moved on.
- Recruitment Positions: Claims Processing, Loss Assessment, Customer Support, Product Planning
- Application Qualifications: [Varies by position
"Well, figures."
He mindlessly scrolled down until he hit the qualification section.
- Strategic Planning & Product Development
- Application Qualifications: Preference for relevant majors or holders of statistics/finance-related certifications
"Yeah... no place for a liberal arts loser like me here."
- Field Claims & Loss Assessment
- Application Qualifications: None
No restrictions on education, age, major, or gender (Korean nationals only)
It was a field position at a major corporation, but insurance field work had a pretty infamous reputation. The performance pressure was insane pressure and it was a place where ordinary people could barely survive. The hiring process also mentioned an AI-based competency assessment — standard these days.
"...Should I apply?"
Being stuck as an unemployed job seeker, he'd been filtering out places that were beneath his level and only applying where he thought he fit — and still getting nowhere. But a large-scale open recruitment by a major corporation? Totally worth at least submitting an application. If by some miracle he got in, it was a major company, so it was pure profit.
Convincing himself with that logic, he submitted his application and closed his sleepy eyes.
The weather was racing toward full-on summer when the open recruitment for Daesung Fire — now rebranded as Cheonmun Fire — wrapped up.
"62,400 final applicants? What's the competition ratio?"
My brain stuttered as I tried to do math for the first time in a while. The recruitment size was 600, so... roughly 104:1. The ratio for Strategic Planning & Product Development, which had been strict on both specs and character, was pretty standard. But the Field Claims & Loss Assessment side — where they'd removed the performance targets designed for company profit and just opened up the qualifications entirely — had been absolutely flooded.
"But man, it's funny. For a field position, a ton of people got filtered out from Strategic Planning."
Their specs were good, but Athena's tests had weeded out a truckload of them.
I understood them. In a normal company, maximizing profit even at the customer's expense is just the job. But this Daesung Fire deal wasn't about corporate profit — it was about making sure insurance policyholders actually got the services they were owed. So unfortunately, they couldn't come along with us.
"The interviewers are in for some rough times."
"It's not like I care about business ethics when we're all going to be screaming at each other with red faces in a game of chicken anyway, right?"
There was supposed to be some professional courtesy between companies about poaching talent, but our goal here was to screw over every insurance company except ours and make them operate legitimately. Professional courtesy got chucked out the window a long time ago.
"President Han's got his work cut out for him."
He was technically a professional manager, but he was still the chairman. Still, "President" had just stuck in my mouth, and I kept saying it.
"If he's enjoying it, that's what matters. Let me know when the hiring's done. Time to start causing some chaos for the other insurers."
If they realized that not operating ethically meant losing all their customers, I believed they'd change at least a little.
All recruitment wrapped up, basic employee training completed — Cheonmun Fire & Marine Insurance officially began operations.
"...I'm not sure if this is the right call."
Lee Jae-seong, who'd been riding high in the Cheonmun Group headquarters strategy planning office before suddenly being appointed president of the acquired insurance company, let out a sigh as he thought about the orders he'd received from the new chairman.
Legitimate insurance claims filed by customers shall be reviewed and, if no issues are found, paid immediately.
If any evidence of fault ratio manipulation is found, the company shall prepare for legal disputes rather than settling with the opposing insurer.
Employee performance evaluations shall be based on legitimate payouts and customer trust, not on claim denial amounts.
Highly symbolic orders — and at the same time, absolutely insane conditions for an insurance company. With no intention of playing nice with the other insurers, he planned to poach employees and steal customers like it was second nature. The view from the office of the company he'd been appointed to lead was... complicated. He hid his feelings as best he could.
"No matter how I look at it, this is crazy... Still, doing good work means I'll at least have something to brag about to my kids."
The faces of his seniors and peers who'd been fired for doing shady work flashed through his mind.
Knock knock—
As he was reviewing documents, the door opened and his secretary walked in.
"Um... sir. A field report just came in. But the situation is a bit..."
The secretary's voice trailed off. Lee Jae-seong looked up from the pile of papers and stared at her.
"What's the situation? Did we not follow protocol?"
"No, we followed protocol perfectly. But the opposing insurance company is already filing complaints."
If they were already throwing fits this early in the game, they must be doing something right.
"What are they saying?"
"They complained to the field claims team staff about having no business ethics regarding how this case was handled."
At the secretary's words, a snort escaped him. This was something they'd already prepared for, and the parent company had promised support. There was nothing to be intimidated by.
"Ignore it. Group directive. We're pushing forward like this."
"Yes, sir. Also, new membership inquiries are steadily rising."
Looking at the tablet the secretary handed him, he saw pleasing numbers. For the aggressive initial expansion, they'd been persistently marketing to other insurers' customers, and with online reviews piling up about how well claims were being handled, new customer acquisition was steadily increasing.
One week into full operations, I decided to check the communities, partly as a progress check.
Starting from that comment thread, centering around car communities, posts were spreading at viral levels.
"Did you pull some strings? There's an unnatural amount of praise posts."
The public sentiment was so overwhelmingly positive that for a second I wondered if Athena had hired shills.
"Then that's good. Any reaction from the other insurers?"
"Well, obviously. We're happily stealing their customers — no way they'd be happy about it."
"What's there to not like? Properly determining fault?"
Are these people insane?
"They do their jobs like shit and then come at us? I can't even understand this."
"Hmm... Did we make too many enemies?"
"True. If it turns into a mudslinging match, we've got nothing to lose. What about the accounting profits?"
"Then we keep going this way. It's not like they can do anything besides bark at us with words, right?"
When you go against the mainstream and do the right thing, you always catch flak for it.
"Already? I figured that kind would show up, but that was fast."
On the surface, we might look like an easy company that just hands out insurance money, but we review everything thoroughly and Athena keeps constant watch. Anyone trying to commit fraud is going to end up getting sued by a major corporation's legal team.