Thanks for the link.  I think that it comes down to this line:

   "(If for no other reason than because they are vastly outnumbered, 400,000 to 100,000.)"   If you get rid of the "extra" 300,000 insurance reps, you'll see a different picture.  There are simply tons of insurance guys who do very little.  Those 300,000 agents are people who would get canned at wirehouses.   If someone goes to an insurance company and puts in "wirehouse effort",  they'll outearn the wirehouse guy in most instances.    There are certainly guys managing $1 billion +, and they are making a ton, but I wouldn't compare them to guys in my office, because the guys in my office aren't anywhere near the top.  I know that 2 years ago, the guy who was #1 with my primary carrier made about 40 million from all sources.   For me, a better comparison is my firm vs. the local Merrill Lynch office.  It's a pretty good guess on my part that the average of the top 10 at ML is about $200,000 less than my firm.  I can only make a good guess about this because a handful of them are clients of mine.    On the other hand, if we start talking about averages, ML may be higher.  We have plenty of people who sell almost nothing, but there's no reason to get rid of them.