Reported By:
| Edited By: Nandini Goswami |Source: DNA |Updated: Mar 16, 2018, 05:34 AM IST
Insurance agents are under some rare global spotlight.
This year’s million dollar round table (MDRT), a global congregation of top insurance agents, will see SBI Life taking the honours for having the maximum number of best sales professionals.
The insurance unit of State Bank of India had 2,677 MDRT members, better than global biggies like New York Life, Samsung Life Insurance, Northwestern Mutual and Prudential Life Insurance.
To be a MDRT qualifier in 2009, an insurance agent has to earn a first-year commission of Rs 759,100 or a first-year premium income of Rs 30,36,400 in the calendar January to December 2008. To qualify for the ‘court of table’ or ‘top of table’ he or she has to earn commission and premium which is thrice and six times the MDRT amount, respectively.
For SBI Life, 222 were court of table and 64 top of table.
Of its total list, 1,667 insurance advisors are from the retail agency channel and 1,010 are certified insurance facilitators from bancassurance.
Other Indian insurers who made it to the high ranks included HDFC Standard Life, Life Insurance Corporation and Max New York Life.
M N Rao, MD & CEO, SBI Life said, “Our global ranking is testimony to the robustness of Indian financial services market despite the prevailing global downturn.”
The last couple of years have seen an 80% growth in Indian MDRT members. While the number of Indian MDRT members has grown manifold, the number of qualifiers is much more. Companies like LIC have a large number of qualifiers. A qualifier has to pay $625 to attend an annual conference of MDRT held every year in the US or Canada to become a MDRT member.
Some companies like SBI Life, among others, give incentives to agents to become a member.
Anand A Jathan, chairperson of the MDRT zone (India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) for 2009-10, said, “India is number one in terms of membership growth and stands third as far as total membership is concerned worldwide. When a life insurance advisor qualifies and joins MDRT he or she belongs to an exclusive group of less than 1% of world’s best life insurance advisors.”
“The MDRT annual meeting is one of the best in the industry and more than 7,000 members attend every year. When a company promotes MDRT membership, a win-win situation is created for the agent, the company and MDRT,” he said.
