https://www.policygenius.com/life-insurance/dead-peasant-insurance/
The nickname dead peasant insurance started in the 1980s, when several large companies — including Walmart, Procter & Gamble, Nestle, and Winn-Dixie — bought corporate-owned life insurance policies on thousands of regular employees. [1]
This was done for tax benefits, not to profit from the deaths of employees. But because companies did it without telling employees — and raked in millions through tax breaks and death benefits — critics started calling it dead peasant insurance.