Going back to the insurance thing, having given this some thought in the meantime. Most large insurers will have a ‘mass market’ division (or something of that ilk, I’m using the term that Old Mutual use in South Africa).
There will always be insurance products or funeral plans (etc) for people living hand-to-mouth without credit, without bank accounts, and/or who live in the flood plains or forest-fire zones. Some poor sods will do the rounds and collect the payments in cash in person.
I forget which Charles Bukowski book it was (Ham On Rye?) but he tells some colourful stories about the life of a door-to-door insurance man. He sells the policies and he collects the payments. In the contract the customer signed but didn’t read it says that if you miss a payment you invalidate your policy. Once in a while a solid customer misses a week but pays double the next and the collector enters two different dates. Keeping them on the hook a while longer.
Another trick is to sign up a nice quota of schmucks and keep the thing going for long enough to fix your own credit rating, buy a car on tick, and graduate to driving for Uber. By the time the defaults escalate you are less at risk of being shot by aggrieved customers because someone else is doing the door-to-door collections and you’re in ‘your’ Chevvy.
Either way the insurer wins, and they will do so this time too.
c.f. sub-prime mortgages
I gather that the used car market in the US is so shattered by the way that second-hand cars are being sold with six year contracts, the norm being three.
I can’t comment on the underlying risks being realistic or not (for the insurers that is).