DOES YOUR INSURANCE AGENT LOOK AFTER YOUR INTERESTS?

 

DOES YOUR INSURANCE AGENT LOOK AFTER YOUR INTERESTS?

Finding the right agent is crucial in the life insurance journey.

THE INSURANCE REGULATORY and Development Authority of India (Irdai) is actively considering giving insurance customers an option to switch agents anytime during the term of the policy, provided the policy term is 20 years or less. Customers should use this privilege to bond only with those agents who build enduring relationship.

At present, insurers keep pushing agents to sell policies as much as they can. As a result, regularly visiting customers to review their insurance needs and understanding their grievances take a back seat. While experts talk about low insurance penetration and low insurance density in India, these indicators speak nothing about the growth of insured population or the growth of in-force policies. In fact, barely 20% of Indians are covered by individual life insurance and more than 60% of insurance customers either stop keeping their policies in force or surrender them within five years.

Net Promoter Score

The concept of Net Promoter Score (a globally accepted metric to measure customer loyalty) has not gained ground here. Much of the growth of life insurance business happens because of churning of policies by insurance intermediaries. Under such circumstances, if customers are empowered to switch agents, it may force agents and insurers to take better care of the existing customers. It will also result in right policies being sold to people and agents nit making a windfall at the expense of customers.

In life insurance, tied agents remain the mainstay of the distribution network as more than 58% of business is still coming through this channel as compared to 29.03% through this channel. So, Indian customers still have huge faith in the ubiquitous insurance agents.

Identify the right agent

All leading private insurers have at least 50,000 active agents across the country. The question is how to identify the right agent in the midst of two million plus agents of the industry. After all the option of agent portability should be exercised only as the last resort.

There are many insurance agents who still care for the customers irrespective of the ticket size of policies. Pick an agent who has a good track record of helping all his customers. Agents who have made a career out of the job of insurance selling are more committed than others in the field. Hence, the agents who are in the profession for at least 10 years have probably invested time and energy in cementing relationship with customers. Those who offer rebates are not professional as their prime objective is to keep the agency in force by somehow registering the required minimum business. Finally, any accomplished agent will listen to the customers more than delivering a canned sales pitch, to push certain products of his choice.

A LIFELONG RELATIONSHIP

Irdai is looking at bringing in agent portability for policies of 20 Years terms or less.

This may force agents and insurers to take better care of their existing customers.

For More Details: Pooja Manoj Gupta, visit www.giia26.com
Email: pmgiia26.com Mobile 9868944340