THE HONG KONG arm of Zurich, the global insurance giant, has introduced a new agency management model for its financial advisory unit. The new model involves certain structural changes and a shift in focus, but makes it easier to provide customers with goal-based financial planning.
The new model draws on examples of best practices from the insurance and banking sectors and one of its main aims is to attract and retain the best people in the industry. It will do this by training financial advisers systematically and then giving them a clear career path. High-achievers will enjoy substantial rewards and be eligible to join a new, attractive profit-sharing scheme.
According to Denny Chan, director of life business at Zurich Insurance Group (Hong Kong), the number of insurance sales agents in the local market fell from 50,000 in 1999 to about 27,000 last year.
Even so, new individual life policies in the Hong Kong market have more than doubled in the past six years.
Seeing this trend, the company pioneered an in-house partnership concept, which allows managers to focus more on agency functions and specialist areas. There is less multitasking than under the traditional model, and more accountability and greater productivity.
Mr Chan said that the model had ushered in a new sense of partnership between agents and the company.