The reform of the insurance agent system, which has been concerned by the life insurance industry, has been further promoted. Recently, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission issued the "Opinions on Further Promoting the improvement of the Personal Insurance Industry Personal Marketing System (draft for comments)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"), pointing out the direction for accelerating the high-quality development of the life insurance industry.

In the past 30 years, China's insurance industry has achieved rapid development, and insurance agents have played an important role in it. Since the insurance agent system was introduced into China in 1992, the agent channel has become the main driving force of the scale expansion of life insurance. However, since reaching a peak of 9.73 million at the end of 2019, the number of agents has begun to decline, and the sea of humanity tactic is difficult to sustain, and it cannot meet the actual needs of the high-quality development of the industry.

With the gradual deepening of the transformation to high-quality development, the insurance industry clearly recognizes that the reform of the agent system is imminent. On the one hand, the life insurance industry calls for more professional agents, and the agent team should achieve a deep transformation from "more" to "fine" to cope with the more complex and diversified protection needs of current consumers. On the other hand, due to the low income of agents, agents have a low sense of ownership, a low sense of belonging, and a high turnover rate, which directly causes the life insurance industry to achieve long-term sustainable development.

Although the agent system reform is unstoppable, it also faces certain challenges. Since the CBRC issued a document in 2020 to encourage insurance institutions to carry out independent agent pilots, there are currently three life insurance companies that have launched the independent agent system pilot. From the perspective of pilot results, large life insurance companies with a large agent team and a relatively high proportion of agent channels are still cautious and slow to promote the independent agent system pilot.

In response to these practical problems, the "Opinions" gave three exploration directions: first, to promote sales benefits to direct sales personnel, so that front-line agents have more sense of gain; Second, encourage the development of independent agent model; Third, we will improve social security for individual agents.

From a long-term perspective, to steadily promote the reform of the insurance agent system, its core should adhere to the principle of "people-oriented" and focus on solving the problems of independence, specialization and professionalism of agents.

Compared with the traditional insurance agent model, the independent individual insurance agent is more inclined to independent business development, rather than "team fighting". From the perspective of the regulations of the Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, the requirements for independent personal insurance agents in terms of education, integrity, professional quality, training and other aspects are higher than that of traditional personal insurance agents. At the same time, this system breaks the traditional marketing structure, the agent organization structure is flat, and the commission is tilted to the first-line agent as much as possible.

At present, when the insurance industry accelerates the development of high quality, promoting the independent personal insurance agent system is conducive to promoting the transformation of the insurance agent team to the direction of specialization and professionalism. The improvement of the occupational threshold is not only conducive to the agent team to "go to the empty fire", to screen out agents with real professional skills and career potential, but also to the agent team to "replenish qi and blood", so that the income distribution is more reasonable, so as to enhance the enthusiasm of agents to exhibition and strengthen professional skills.

At the same time, adhere to the "people-oriented" to steadily promote the agent system reform, which is conducive to safeguarding the rights and interests of insurance consumers.

All along, despite repeated orders from the regulatory authorities, it is still difficult to cure many chaos such as self-insured parts mutual insurance arbitrage, deposit-to-policy, and surrender black products, which ultimately lies in the high commission and various incentive costs. Therefore, by optimizing the design of the personal agent system, promoting the direct tilt of sales benefits to sales personnel and encouraging the exploration of the independent agent model, insurance agents can focus on the main business, more accurately mine and match consumer needs, provide differentiated services, and enhance industry reputation.

Recently, the China Insurance Association issued the "Insurance sales practitioners sales ability qualification classification system construction plan" proposed, and strive to use about three years, in the form of industry self-discipline to implement sales personnel sales product authorization and sales ability level matching sales classification management, and gradually promote the sales ability qualification classification into the national vocational skill level recognition system. Comprehensively improve the professional quality and professional skill level of sales staff.

To promote the agent system reform, we should follow the principle of "people-oriented", further improve the company's organizational structure design, and enhance the social security of personal agents.

For insurance companies, when exploring different reform models, they should not only create a better career development environment for agents, but also improve their per capita productivity. It is also necessary to set up a "minimum guarantee policy" for outstanding talents, give agents more protection, truly retain more high-quality insurance agents, and treat the chronic diseases of the life insurance industry from the fundamental link of sales.

There is no doubt that the quality of the insurance agent team is related to the long-term development of the insurance industry. With the gradual deepening of the agent system reform, in three years, where the 4 million agents will go in the future, and whether the life insurance sales can usher in a new climate, it is worth more people's expectations.

Source: Financial Times