India membership at MDRT soars 80%

Financial advisors (or agents) in the domestic life insurance business promise to strike it big at Indianapolis, where the annual meet of the Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT) is to be held from June 7 to 11, 2009.

The MDRT is a gathering of almost 40,000 members from 87 countries and 497 life insurance companies across the globe.

The growth in membership of MDRT professionals from India has been phenomenal, with a 80% growth logged over the last couple of years. SBI Life, HDFC Standard, LIC, Max New York Life have grown their MDRT numbers substantially.

A MDRT membership is recognised internationally as the standard of sales excellence in life insurance business.

For starters, to be an MDRT qualifier in 2009, he or she should have earned a first year commission of Rs 7,59,100 or a first year premium income of Rs 30,36,400 in the calendar January to December 2008.

Anand A Jathan, member of Whole Person Task Force, MDRT, and former country chair for MDRT, told DNA Money, “India today holds the fourth position in terms of membership worldwide and the first position in terms of membership growth.

Its membership has grown from just 229 members in 2003, 618 members in 2005 to 1999 members in 2007 and 3991 members in 2009.

The number of qualifiers is much higher. In LIC, for example, number of qualifiers are 1196 but members are only 335.”

A qualifier has to pay $625 to become a MDRT member. “It is important to showcase yourself in the international space.

These days many life insurance companies give incentives to agents to become a member.

However, number of members who attend the meeting are less as this involves Visa issues and other registration charges,” Jathan said. What’s more, LIC’s Rajesh Satoskar and R K Shetty will be the first two Indian life insurance agents in the history of MDRT to deliver speeches in the focus session at Indianapolis.

How difficult was it to sell policies over the last few months? Satoskar said, “Obviously there was an impact of the recession on selling of big policies.

Many people had blocked their funds and, due to the liquidity crunch, many big sales were in difficulty.

Most high networth individuals were regular investors in stocks and properties and hence fund flow was restricted for life insurance. But a strong set up and a new product Jeevan Aastha geared sales”.

Rajender Sud, director and head, agency distribution, MaxNYL, said, “MDRT is one of highest pinnacles of success achieved by an agent advisor. At Max NYL, we provide and encourage our agents to look at insurance sales from a more holistic frame of mind.”

While their core responsibility is sales, our systems also encourage them to look at it as a viable career option. We have set in place certain processes that encourage our advisors to follow certain ‘must do’ items.