LIC thinks big, to rope in 3 lakh more agents

May 29, 2008

The country’s largest insurance company — Life Insurance Corporation — is looking at recruiting three lakh agents. The corporation has over one million agents. Most of LIC’s policies continue to be sold by agents though the corporation has been making attempts to grow alternate channels such as bancassurance. To increase the size of the agency force, the corporation expects its existing development officers to recruit new agents. In addition, the corporation plans to add another 4,700 development officers to its field force. The corporation has also introduced a chief life insurance advisor scheme where senior agents will recruit more agents. These existing senior agents are expected to add several new salespeople during the year.

In addition to increasing the number of agents, the corporation is looking at ways of increasing the productivity of its existing agents. In the initial years of liberalization, 80% of new insurance agents were being recruited by LIC. In recent years, around 80% are being enrolled by the private companies. According to Shewak Gidwani, secretary general of the Insurance Institute of India which conducts examinations for prospective agents, close to 27 lakh people registered for the exams in 2007-08, of this around 19 lakh actually appeared and around 9 lakh passed. Over six lakh agents were recruited by the private life insurance companies.

Although insurance companies have recruited more than 20 lakh agents since the industry opened up, the size of their existing agency force is not known. Some private companies see as much as 50% of their entire agency force being replaced during the year.

Although the ramp-up in recruitment has led to increased lapsation of agents, competition is forcing life insurers to make up for the agents dropping out by recruiting fresh agents. When the life insurance industry was opened up, private companies had taken a stand that they would focus on career agents — salespeople who would make a living selling life insurance. This approach was quickly abandoned in their quest to achieve scale rapidly. Today, a large number of insurance agents recruited by private companies are either part-time agents or see their profession as in-between jobs. The growth in employment opportunities in the BPO sector is making it difficult for life insurers to find young people willing to take up selling life insurance.

Private insurance companies had earlier aimed to increase the stature of insurance agents in public perception by repositioning them as financial advisers. However, the repositioning did not work as companies shifted focus from quality to scale.

Source: Insuremagic