What is the relationship between the professional quality of insurance agents and insurance marketing?

Transferred from People's Daily Online 1 1.

An uninsured "insurance agent"

Ms. Liu's first impression of an insurance salesman came from a girl named Xiao Yan-

On June 5438+065438+ 10, 2003, Ms. Liu was diagnosed with cervical cancer during routine physical examination in her unit. The doctor reminded her that the incidence of cervical cancer is high at her age, and she should be reexamined immediately. Accompanied by her mother, Ms. Liu came to Chaoyang District Maternal and Child Health Hospital in Beijing to see the clinic. In the waiting room, Liu met him with a smile and claimed to be an insurance agent.

In the dreary atmosphere of the hospital, it seems inappropriate for Xiao Yan to promote insurance. But Ms. Liu feels that it is not easy to do anything now, and she can understand it. But then she found out that Xiaoyan's "sales promotion" was really outrageous, just like her conversation with Ms. Liu-

"The doctor suspected that you were cervical cancer? Oh, aunt, that's not easy to cure. You should buy an insurance, and if something happens, you can leave a guarantee for your family. " Xiao Yan said.

"I haven't checked yet, not necessarily." Ms. Liu glanced at her mother and found that the old man's eyes were wrong. "Then you should also consider it. Our dividend is quite high, which is much more suitable than depositing in the bank. "

"Are found to be sick, but also sell my insurance? That won't make it up to you! " Ms. Liu is a little disgusted.

"In terms of physical examination, I help." Xiaoyan seems to have answers.

……

Ms. Liu complained to the reporter: "Can this quality be insured? ! Who dares to give money to people who cheat customers, companies and people? Don't touch their side. "

Ms. Liu has not been insured since then. But some people are not as lucky as her:

Miss Ding from Beijing, encouraged by her agent's "annual income of 7%-9%" three years ago, bought 80,000 yuan of investment-linked insurance. In the past three years, the dividends of insurance companies have been unsatisfactory, and only 30% of the premiums can be returned when they surrender. At that time, the agent's promise was not reflected in the contract text, and there was nothing in it. Ren Xiaoding roared his voice on the phone.

Mr. Zhao of Tianjin insured his new car in the first half of this year. After listening to the introduction of the insurance agent, he mistakenly thought that he could get the double indemnity after the vehicle accident by insuring two different types of insurance, so he bought them all. Unexpectedly, after the car accident in August, the insurance company could only pay for these two insurances once.

Organizations and units are also suffering from insurance. A newspaper was cheated out of 20 million by an agent and has not recovered a penny so far.

The problem of "mass agency" can not be ignored;

Before the intervention of China Insurance Regulatory Commission in March 2004, "Vehicle Accident Comprehensive Insurance" was sold at airports and other outlets in China. Before the Spring Festival this year, Hao, a professor from the Insurance Department of the Central University of Finance and Economics, led students to investigate at the Capital Airport and found that some handwritten insurance policies had no bills at all in insurance companies. This means that once passengers are in distress, they will not be able to claim compensation, and the black hands who manipulate "bottomless insurance" are some agents and agents.

In 2003, many lawless elements used to sell so-called "insurance funds" or "insurance contracts" in some areas of China in the name of agents of overseas commercial institutions, and even organized training and development of sales personnel by pyramid schemes prohibited by the state, illegally engaged in insurance business or engaged in insurance fraud activities, which made many people deceived.

According to the statistics of China Consumers Association, in recent years, insurance complaints once rose to one of the top ten complaint hotspots, and their complaints were largely related to insurance agents:

If the insurance terms are difficult to understand, the agent will cheat the applicant-

Many policyholders have this desire: there are too many technical terms in insurance contract terms, which are more difficult to understand than legal terms. Some insurance agents use the opportunity of explanation to "trap" the policyholders, choose favorable ones from them, and sell insurance by hook or by crook.

Another example is that insurance claims are difficult-

Many policyholders complain that once an accident occurs, insurance companies are not as patient as they were when they sold insurance. If they don't pay for this, they won't pay, and their attitude is not good. The place where disputes arise is often the link that insurance agents deliberately avoided and concealed from the beginning. For example, Ms. Zhang of Ann handled several old-age insurances of an insurance company for her husband at 1998. In 2003, her lover died of stomach cancer, and she was refused compensation when claiming compensation because she failed to fulfill her obligation to tell the truth. It turned out that her husband got a lung tumor on 1997 and recovered, but the agent did all the work when taking out the insurance. After the accident, Ms. Zhang first saw in the insurance company that the health report that should have been signed by her husband was signed by the agent.

With the improvement of living standards, insurance, a financial product that people were not familiar with in the past, has gradually penetrated into the lives of ordinary people in recent years, playing the role of disaster prevention, impairment and security. However, the frequent occurrence of misleading consumption and malicious fraud by insurance agents not only harms the interests of policyholders, but also tarnishes the image of insurance in people's minds and hurts people's enthusiasm for insurance, which has become a fatal injury to the development of insurance industry.

Weak system and the loss of marginal people

Some insurance agents lack honesty, on the one hand, because of their low moral standards, on the other hand, it is related to the current agent qualification certification system and insurance marketing system.

Disadvantages of low threshold

At present, the number of people who have obtained the qualification certification of insurance agents in China is as high as 6.5438+0.4 million. However, while the number of agents is constantly expanding, their quality has not improved or even declined.

At present, the insurance agent qualification examination, the first hurdle for ordinary people to enter the insurance industry, has been questioned by many people inside and outside the industry. Experts generally believe that the form of this exam is greater than the content and the questions are too simple.

It is reported that the basic requirement of the regulatory authorities for those who take the agent examination is junior high school education. If the first test fails, the "quasi-agent" can still pay the make-up fee of 15 yuan to the test center under the leadership of the company and take the test again, and so on until passing the test.

With the development of the insurance market, the current insurance products have not only a single guarantee function in the traditional sense, but also evolved into financial products with multiple functions such as investment, wealth management and guarantee, which requires agents to have a high cultural level and professional knowledge reserves. But the reality is that the ranks of agents are mixed, and some "cultural water" is too little-many policyholders have the experience of asking insurance agents for professional terms in insurance contracts, but they are hesitant and don't understand!

This ratio makes us more worried about the future of the insurance industry: a study in Shanghai shows that among insurance agents, unemployed and laid-off workers account for 9 1%, and high school education or below accounts for 80%.

Marginalization brought by marketing system

People who have no sense of belonging will inevitably get lost sometimes. The army of life insurance salesmen in China is a team with no sense of belonging.

At present, the prevailing personal marketing system in domestic life insurance industry was introduced by AIA in the early 1990s. Because of its affinity, it quickly pushed insurance to thousands of households, so it became the main marketing channel of China life insurance industry in a short time, and now personal agency business has accounted for 80% of the whole life insurance premium scale. However, with the passage of time, there are more and more disadvantages of this agency system.

Disadvantage 1: A large number of laid-off workers become "insurance agents" due to low entry barriers. At the same time, because most insurance companies have not established a complete training system, if agents have low marketing level and poor performance, they will be dismissed soon, which makes the professional stability of insurance agents very poor.

Disadvantage 2: Because the insurance agent is not an employee of the insurance company, he does not enjoy any benefits and allowances of the insurance company, and his income depends entirely on business commission. According to industry insiders, the commission ratio of insurance companies to marketers is generally 20%-35%. 25% of the premium of a policy in the first year is paid as commission, and then it will decrease year by year. Usually, after five years of commission, salesmen will no longer enjoy the benefits of this policy. This is also one of the reasons why some insurance agents mislead or induce consumers to take out insurance and other short-term behaviors.

Disadvantage 3: Domestic insurance companies are very serious in poaching each other. A recent survey by Boston Consulting Group shows that the overall turnover rate of insurance agents in China is higher than 50% every year. The survey also shows that the turnover rate of insurance company salesmen in the first year is as high as 70%-80%, of which Ping An Insurance reaches 85%, Taikang Insurance and Hong Zhong Insurance reach 80%; China Life Insurance, Xinhua Life Insurance and AIA China Branch are 70%. Marketers, especially excellent marketers, change jobs, which means that the policies they used to sell have become "orphan policies". In other words, the service customers get by purchasing insurance policies may not be guaranteed.

An excellent insurance agent once told reporters: "The current system makes many marketers feel insecure at all and feel that they are just marginal people. The way to get rid of this feeling is to make as much money as you can. "

The marginalization of agents has gradually evolved into a talent dilemma in the industry: poor professional stability and poor social image, making it difficult to attract outstanding talents. Although there are 400,000 insurance agents at present, the analysis of supply and demand of labor market in some cities by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security in the second quarter of 2003 shows that the most lacking position in Beijing is insurance agent, and only 1 person applies for every 22 agent positions, and similar situations have appeared in other cities to varying degrees.

How to optimize the team of "agents"

On the issue of insurance agents, Wu Dingfu, chairman of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, said that insurance agents have no sense of belonging and are a short-term team. This is just contrary to the long-term strategy of the development of insurance companies. How to reform the insurance marketing team, how to improve the professional quality and attract more outstanding talents has become an urgent problem for the development of the insurance industry.

Improve selection criteria and expand marketing channels.

Miss Jiang, with a master's degree, is a famous media reporter in China. At present, she is quietly acting as an agent for AIA. Because of good quality, I often contact some high-income people, and my marketing performance is very ideal.

Mr. Cheng, Ph.D., works for a large domestic financial company. In the past year, he received several business invitations from AIA. The income model and personal career design provided by insurance companies are gradually making him move.

Since last year, AIA, which introduced the "agent marketing system" into China, announced that it would reform the previous agent system and develop new channels including telemarketing. It can be seen that introducing high-quality part-time agents is one of their new strategies.

Sino-American MetLife, a joint venture life insurance company established at the beginning of this year, has only been in business for one month, and its agents have sold 8.5 policies per capita. Against the background of monthly sales of 1.3 policies in domestic life insurance industry, the performance of metropolis is impressive. Bao Hongjian, chief actuary of the company, said that the good results benefited from two aspects of innovation: first, recruiting new people with no life insurance experience-training their own "elite" team from scratch, and letting sales representatives help customers analyze their life plans from a professional perspective and put forward different life insurance portfolio suggestions. Second, telemarketing-life insurance salespeople solicit consumers' opinions on some occasions, leave consumers' phone numbers, and conduct telemarketing when the other party is willing to "listen" and "leave a reasonable distance for the other party". She said that consumers appreciate this new method very much.

Other insurance companies with "foreign" ancestry, such as Hong Zhong Life Insurance, Italy Life Insurance and Everbright Life Insurance, generally require college education or above when recruiting agents, which is obviously higher than the standards of Chinese insurance companies.

Anderson, the foreign investor of ruitai Life Insurance, a Sino-Swiss joint venture company, and the president of Scandia Insurance Company, simply put forward the extreme slogan of "Don't trust agents". He pointed out that the German insurance market 10 years ago was similar to that in China today, and the insurance marketing was mainly through the agent channel, but it turned out that the effect was not good. Scandia's main product is "linked insurance". Anderson said that the development of investment-linked insurance needs high-end financial planners to meet the needs of strategic cooperation between companies and banks, and provide customers with long-term investment and savings integration solutions through bank channels. "They not only have to explain the products to customers, but also have the ability to help customers make the right choices." Ruitai Life CEO Zeng Donglu said.

In the increasingly fierce competition in the insurance industry, foreign insurance is obviously in a leading position in recruiting and reserving excellent marketing talents. This poses a challenge to China enterprises that rely on crowd tactics to survive.

Establish a special agent "regular army"

On July 9 and 12 this year, Xinhua Life Insurance Company set up two insurance agency limited liability companies in Yunnan and Chongqing successively, and the personal business salesmen of Kunming Branch and Chongqing Branch of Xinhua Life Insurance Company were all stripped off and became professional salesmen of Xinhua Life Insurance Agency Company. The reference indicators for regularization include: years of employment, business volume in a certain period, and violation records. Different from the current insurance agent system, the agent of Xinhua Life Insurance has changed from the original "business agency relationship" with the company to "employment relationship", with a fixed basic salary, formally signing a labor contract and enjoying the social welfare guarantee stipulated by the state. This is the first time in the insurance industry, which means that the life insurance agent system in China insurance market 10 began to change.

"Instead of spending a lot of manpower and material resources to manage' agent employees', it is better to spend a little cost to stabilize your agent team and let them become their own employees. This will help the company improve its service quality and maintain its brand and image. " Professor Hao, director of the Insurance Department of the Central University of Finance and Economics, believes that it will be an inevitable trend for China's life insurance marketing team to eventually become a company system, and it should be a suitable direction for insurance companies to invest in setting up or holding sales and service companies, as life insurance companies in developed countries generally do.

The CIRC echoes the pioneering work of Xinhua Life Insurance. According to relevant sources, this move of Xinhua Life Insurance has adapted to the market demand for specialization and professionalization of insurance salesmen, and represents the image of China insurance industry, especially life insurance marketing and insurance industry. It is reported that the CIRC is also trying to negotiate with the Ministry of Labor and Social Security to clarify the legal status of marketers and protect their legitimate rights and interests, so as to ensure the basic quality and stability of this team. The specific idea is: within three to five years, the existing marketers will be diverted in three ways: first, insurance companies will keep some; Second, professional intermediary companies and agency companies absorb part of it; The third is to allow people with outstanding performance and certain strength to set up a partnership agency voluntarily, or set up an individual agency enterprise according to law.

Supervision department: strengthen management and shape the image of agents' integrity.

Recently, the reporter learned from relevant parties that a large-scale action to regulate insurance practitioners has been quietly launched.

The CIRC will formulate the "code of ethics" for insurance practitioners in the near future to strengthen the integrity construction of insurance practitioners. This is the first time that China's insurance industry has formulated a national code of ethics and conduct for employees, and the China Insurance Association will also formulate a corresponding code of conduct.

This move by the CIRC has undoubtedly made a good start in regulating the insurance market in various regions.

The Deputy Director of Guangdong Insurance Regulatory Bureau revealed at the inaugural meeting of the Intermediary Committee of Guangdong Insurance Industry Association on September 22 that most agency companies in Guangdong Province are in a state of loss, and the newly established Intermediary Committee will formulate and implement the "blacklist" system for intermediary employees.

Shaanxi Insurance Industry Association recently issued the Interim Measures for the Registration and Management of Insurance Agents with Bad Credit Behavior, which classifies insurance agents into three categories: A, B and C according to their behaviors, and stipulates that those who are included in the list of A-type bad credit agents shall be announced to the public by the association with the authorization of Shaanxi Insurance Regulatory Bureau, and all member units shall not engage in business; If it is included in the list of Class B bad credit agents, the association will notify it in the industry according to the circumstances and stop its exhibition industry 1 to 3 years; If it is included in the list of Class C bad credit agents, the Association will inform other member enterprises for reference.

At the same time, the "blacklist" system of Shanghai and Zhejiang Insurance Regulatory Bureau will also be introduced one after another to punish serious violators. After the trial implementation of the standard, insurance salesmen who intercept insurance premiums, claim insurance or insurance benefits, solicit business by fraudulent means such as fraud, cajoling and blinding, instigate fraud, forge documents, and collude with policyholders will be included in the "blacklist". The affiliated insurance company must immediately terminate the agency relationship, and shall not accept the business provided by it in any form and pay the commission.

Rome was not built in a day. We need to make unremitting efforts from all aspects to standardize the insurance agent team, put an end to all kinds of cigar smoke in the insurance agent market and make it better serve Chinese consumers and the development plan of China's insurance industry. Today, while we are annoyed by the unhappiness brought by some insurance agents, we are also delighted to see that there are young and promising new faces in the ranks of insurance agents in China, and they are beginning to show a new mental outlook. But this is far from enough. We look forward to more changes. ...

Further reading: How to buy insurance, which is good, and teach you how to avoid these "pits" of insurance.