first annual summit enhancing agency productivity and...

FIRST ANNUAL SUMMIT

ENHANCING AGENCY PRODUCTIVITY AND EFFICIENCY

MumbaiAugust 27, 2015

REVIEW

This annual Summit, jointly organized by Fintelektand LIMRA, featured international perspectivesfrom global speakers, regulatory perspective fromthe Indian insurance regulator, and paneldiscussions representing top management frominsurance companies. Technology and consultingfirms also shared their knowledge, best practicesand insights with practitioners in the Indianinsurance industry. The summit was well attendedby insurance industry professionals across variousindustry levels.

The Summit brought together CEOs from leadinglife and general insurance companies whodiscussed a view from the top and thestrategies/changes that are being planned by theorganizations to make products accessible to thenew-age customers. The panel consisting oftraining heads of life insurance companiesdiscussed key challenges, trends and solutions inagency training and development. The panel ofCIOs/CTOs from leading life and general insurancecompanies discussed disruptive technologies andways to stay agile in the current digital market.

Fintelekt LIMRA First Annual Summit 2015

Fintelekt LIMRA First Annual Summit 2015 3

D.D.Singh presented an overview of the agency distribution channel inIndia, expressing concern about the low retention of agents and lowproductivity per agent. He stressed the need for re-examining the policiesaround agent recruitment and simplification of some of the regulations thatmay be too rigorous at present. At the same time, insurance companiesneed to invest in developing the agent and creating a career path for them.

Key Takeaways

Insurance companies should focus on exam-oriented training as well as skill development.The only way to sustain an agent is to enhancehis productivity.

Given the disruptions on account of newtechnologies, , there will likely be a change inthe way insurance is sold in future. Companieswill have to equip their agents accordingly, andtrain them to be more customer-centric.

Mis-selling is a major reason why peoplehesitate in buying insurance. The insurancecompanies have to play an important role inbuilding trust.

Products should be simpler and easier to sell tomake them attractive to customers.

Insurance agents need to demonstrate their value to the customer to remain relevant in the market. - D D Singh, Member (Distribution), IRDAI

Keynote AddressD D Singh, Member (Distribution), Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI)


Mark shared a number of insights from LIMRA and LOMA research that highlightedkey trends and expectations going forward. He also shared his thoughts on how totackle major distribution related issues.

Key Takeaways

Four criteria that will impact the industry moving forward:i. Demographics: Demographics is a major driver of change and growth and

focuses on the middle market and retirement risk going forward.ii. Regulation and Legislation: Regulations can help to create newer markets.iii. Technology: Technology will allow the indutry to serve the customer better, as

well as increase productivity.iv. Rising consumer expectations: Consumers will be driving the focus for the

industry in the years to come. A LIMRA survey demonstrates that 95% of consumers prefer face-to-face interaction

while purchasing insurance. Thus the role of intermediaries is very important. Agents need to be trained on the process of relationship building and working together

with customers. People typically hesitate in buying insurance policies because the jargons and technical

terms used in the industry are confusing to them, calling for the need to simplifyproducts and processes.

Younger generation employees/agents prefer to work in teams and to be assigned teamtargets instead of individual tasks.

The goal of LIMRA & LOMA is to help member companies and organizations improve productivity and profitability, through

research, seminars and training programs.

Special AddressMark S. Wallis, Managing Director, International Business Development, LIMRA & LOMA


Piyush discussed how the use of technology across industries has given the consumer thepower of dictating terms in an unprecedented way. Today’s consumers do not want to betreated as a segment; they want the power of one. Economic demographic is pervasive.Technology invasion in itself is not enough to bring about a positive change.

Key Takeaways

Companies should start thinking about how to attack “the power of one”, which would provideopportunities to consume data generated by consumers of various technologies. This createsthe threat of not having enough capacity to buy, use, consume and analyse the data. Companiesneed to decide intelligently how and what data to consume.

The companies have to think through how to bring about a business change to deliver thecustomer experience after a technology change.

Channels will have to be omnipresent to ensure seamless experience for users. Companies have to decide their risk appetite based on consumers’ risk appetites. Companies in India need to think about how to create a local Fintech hub here, so that

renovation stays in India, with more focus on local consumers’ needs.

Accenture Technology Vision for Insurance 2015 - The Digital Insurance Era Piyush Singh, Managing Director - Financial Services, Accenture

e-Commerce Imperatives for Insurance DistributionMadhava Madanapalli, General Manager – BFSI, Wipro Infotech

Madhava raised the pertinent question of what companies need to do going forward, giventhe disruption in technology. He shared his view on how traditional e-commerce andinsurance is looked at and on the need to change the way internal processes are looked at.

Key Takeaways

The market needs to be segmented into four quadrants: literate and illiterate, digitally-literateand digitally-illiterate. Each quadrant needs to have a different distribution approach.

Insurance companies should start looking at e-commerce as a possibility of putting together allthe other channels and deliver what the customer wants. E-commerce is not a standalonechannel of distribution.

The process of sale with the customer has to be seamless and there should be delight in theprocess.

Intermediaries continue to be important. Agents should be trained to deal with the e-world soas to be more productive.

The industry needs to work with the regulators to simplify policy wordings.


The insurance industry is recovering from several downtrends. To be more relevant in future, the industry

needs to move strategically and pro-actively to adopt customer friendly, yet regulator-accepted, selling

practices. The overall customer-facing sales and service strategies of companies need to flow from the core

values and the CEO-driven execution philosophy.

The panel discussion was focused around ways to bridge the trust gap between companies and consumers,

bring a connect between agents and customers and increase productivity of distribution channels. The

panelists also discussed how the industry will have to cope with changing customer demands in the future.

Key Takeaways:

Bridging trust: Customer, technology and human resources, ifhandled well, will define the distinction between a good and a greatcompany. Focus on the customer should stay during their entireengagement, and not just during policy issuance or renewal.Customer engagement should happen internally and with activeparticipation of distributors.

Connect between agent and customer: An agent may be arepresentative, but the responsibility of sales and service lies with thelife insurance company. The company needs to continue to engagewith the agent. The responsibility of the agent is to profile acustomer, look at their needs and then suggest a plan. The companycan provide the right technology support to the agent to boostproductivity.

Simplicity of products: Simplicity is the key to sell products and retaincustomers. To ensure that agents stay in the business for the longesttime, companies need to create products that the distributors as wellas the customers understand. Once relationships are built withcustomers, cross-selling will sustain the distributors.

Future expectations: Changes in customer requirements and needswill drive a reassessment of operating models. Companies need tosegment customers based on the experience that they want todeliver, regardless of the delivery channel. Insurance companies willhave to create eco-systems where they can sell not just insurance, buta lot of other financial products.

Insurance companies will have two options in future:Either you create ecosystems and provide insurance as a bundle in a larger set of offerings which the customer needs; or you become a pure transaction provider, where you just provide insurance products and efficient claim service at a very low cost.- Samir Bali, MD – Financial Services, Accenture

From Left to Right: Arijit Basu, Managing Director & CEO, SBI Life Insurance), R MVishakha, Managing Director & CEO, IndiaFirst Life Insurance, Joydeep Roy, ManagingPartner, Amplifia (Moderator), Rakesh Jain, Executive Director & CEO, Reliance GeneralInsurance, Samir Bali, Managing Director - Financial Services, Accenture, Munish Sharda,Managing Director & CEO, Future Generali India Life Insurance

Panel Discussion: The View from the Top


Sales capacity has been a growing challenge for the insurance industry for many years. Investing in

developing the right field leadership is critical if the agency channel is to survive and thrive in the

future.

The panel discussion revolved around various training methods and ways to measure the success of

training. The panelists discussed challenges faced and means to overcome them and increase

productivity and retention of agents via training.

Key Takeaways:

Change in current training modules needed: Training needs to change from being product-drivento becoming customer oriented, which will require a change in KPIs from volume to value. Agentsare not being trained enough to give a customer a delightful experience in the first interactionitself. Further, there is a strong need for inclusion of insurance in the broader academic system.

ROI: There is a need to invest more on training. A fixed percentage of the new premium amounteach year must be put into training for distribution partners. ROI calculation is necessary, as it helpsto have more ownership towards a training initiative, to evaluate effectiveness of a program andthe trainer and to make corrections, if necessary.

Challenges: Few of the biggest challenges include: attracting and retaining talent, providing rightleadership and sales productivity. There is a need to segment the distribution channel and trainthem according to the needs to each segment, whether by geography, vintage, production, orperformance.

Impact: Impact of a training program must not only be visible in increased business, it should alsobe visible in an increase in persistency, case size and productivity.

Suggestions for improvement: Including the customer in the learning journey, gamification, mobilebased learning apps, cross learning and peer learning were some of the suggested areas bypanellists.

Panel Discussion: Key Challenges, Trends and Solutions in Agency Training and Development

From Left to Right: Andy Khoo, CFP, FLMI, AIAA, ACS, MBA, LLIF,Managing Director,The Centre for International Assessment and Development, LIMRA (Moderator),Debashree Verma, Country Head - Learning & Development & ChannelAdministration, SBI Life Insurance, Rajender Sud, Director & Head - New Initiatives,Max Life Insurance, Saba Adil, Chief People Officer, AEGON Religare Life Insurance


The focus of this presentation was on the company’s experience in implementing transformationprograms and the learning from helping industry players in bringing about productivity or highereffectiveness in the agency channel.

Key Takeaways

The ease of sharing an experience for customers usingsocial media (such as a tweet or a facebook post) brings anew dimension to the industry in terms of its focus.

The credibility of agents remains high; thus customers trustagents as the best source for buying insurance. Thechallenge is to sustain this.

The agility demanded from the market is getting higher;thus agents have to be empowered to match this agility,especially in dealingwith a customer who is knowledgeableand digitally literate.

A comprehensive model for agency efficiency consistsprimarily of 4 parts:

i. Empowering the distributors with technology todeal with customers

ii. Collaborating with peers and learning togetheriii. Data sharing related to sales pipelines and leads

on a real time basisiv. Technology that can be improvised over a period

of time, based on changes in the requirements.

Enhancing Channel Productivity and EfficiencyMangesh Vaitla, Co-Founder, C2L BIZ Solutions

Technology disrupts the environment, but it also holds the key to the solutions.- Mangesh Vaitla, Co-Founder, C2L BIZ Solutions


With the advent of technology, our consumers have become price-

sensitive, hyper-connected, highly social and demanding of instant

gratification. Because of the change in the type of end-consumer

we are dealing with, the industry has to adapt a fast pace to keep

up with the changing consumer requirements.

The panelists discussed about the ways they are pacing up to meet

the changing environment and consumer demands, maintaining

agility, digitalization across various channels and in the core

operations, new initiatives, maintaining low risk along with

digitalization and changes in KPIs needed to support the advent of

digitalization.

Key Takeaways:

Agility: Agility should not be only on the part of the company. The customers have to be agile enough to accept the changes made by the company. Also, the distributors have to be able to adapt to the changes made.

Customer tracking across various channels: We need to start tracking a customer’s journey across various channels, and across all the touch points. A customer may search for details online, which if tracked, can providedetails about the needs of the customer.

Digitization of risk process: Key risk indicators can be monitored by creating dashboards and alerts. The entire audit process can be automated for easier comparison and tracking.

Approach to risk: There has to be a change in the mind set of senior management and KPIs defined based on the outcome expected. Risk should be made a visible function to the rest of the business through an integrated view of risk, as against isolated fraud cases.

Need for the future: There is a need to not only have a digital portal to sell insurance online, but also to integrate digitalization with the existing distribution channels in order to digitalise the entire customer experience. This will give an edge to the distributors because of ease of data availability, option of generating quotes online, lead generation and simplifying the process of on boarding a customer.

You cannot be digital unless you are digitized. The latter is the first problem to be solved.

- Sudip Banerjee, CTO & Head - ERM, Reliance General Insurance

CTO / CIO Panel Discussion

From Left to Right: Manoj Bhadgaonkar, Managing Director - Financial Services,Accenture (Moderator), Sandip Chakraborty, Senior Vice President (IT & PMO), BhartiAXA General Insurance, Sudip Banerjee, CTO & Head - ERM, Reliance GeneralInsurance, Kirti Patil, Senior Vice President & Head - IT, Kotak Life Insurance


Valedictory AddressSudhin Roy Chowdhury, Former Member (Life), Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI)

Mr. Chowdhury highlighted the growth of insurance industry and the changes that have takenplace in the past years. He stressed the importance of distribution channels, their training needsand how insurance companies need to deal with them. He shared the changes IRDA has broughtin the last few years and the impact of those changes on the industry.

Key Takeaways

20% of the agents bring in 80% of the business. There needs to be a focus on training this category of agents.

There needs to be a constant check on the productivity of agents, and supportive training if their productivity falls below a certain level.

Companies should focus more on persistency. It is better to have few high performing agents who are given more time to prime, than to have a lot of low performing ones.

Companies have to focus on relationship building beyond the role of the distributor.

Contact:

Oliver DicksonVice-PresidentFintelekt

202, Orchard, Nachiket ParkBaner Road, Pune 411045India+91 20 [email protected]

Copyright FintelektR 2016. For limited circulation only.

mailto:[email protected]

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