Insurance agents set to turn more professional

Come October and your policies will be managed by a professional agent. Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) is planning to segregate its agency force. The agents will come under four categories—LIC Mithra, Advisor, Financial Advisor and LIC Wealth Manager.

Agency force will be segregated on the basis of performance. Each segment of the agents will be trained according to the role specified by the corporation. LIC feels that there is a strong need for reshaping the agency force.

S Roy Chowdhary, excecutive director (marketing), LIC, says, “The main objective is to train the agency force in the most professional manner. By doing so, agents will be able to know more about the products, financial markets and the prevailing economic scenario. This will benefit the policyholders since the agents will be in a position to provide financial advices to them.”

This move will encourage a change of role for agents from merely distributing products to financial advisors.

So how is LIC planning to segregate the agents?

“Performance-based and experience-based segmentation of agents will be more effective. Agents will be provided training as per the specified categories. The category depends upon the kind of polices each agent deals with. For instance, agents who deal with high networth individual (HNI) policies will be trained accordingly,” says LIC official.

This could also help in retaining agents in the industry. The Indian insurance industry has been facing a challenge from the agency force. The life insurance industry has been witnessing large scale agents drop outs for few months.

Agents have welcomed such a move, saying it will help prevent mis-selling, among other things.

“This move will help the policyholders. Agents need to play the role of an advisor along with distributing products. It increases the level of customer awareness also,” says Debiprasad Bhattacharya, a Mumbai-based insurance agent.