Happy Life Insurance
Recently the president of Happy Life Insurance Limited (of China) told me about how to harvest wild Chinese Gooseberries (otherwise known as Kiwifruit) with a stone or stick in their native province. As he did so I got a chance to reflect on the differences between the life insurance business in New Zealand and China and how that provides some clues to where this business is headed in the next decade.
Wednesday, October 20th 2010, 9:00AM 
3 Comments
by Russell Hutchinson
Fidelity Life fulfilled their good corporate citizen role by generously hosting the Chinese who were using their contacts at the Life Office Management Association (LOMA) to get a feel for what different insurers are doing in Australia and New Zealand.
Fidelity Life and Happy Life could hardly be more different: Happy sells traditional policies (whole of life) through 22 provincial offices in China with a sales force of about 1,000 agents supervised from each of those offices: that's right - about 22,000 agents. Their total staff (not counting agents) is about 1,400. They have been in business a similar length of time to Fidelity, and have seen incredible changes from a command economy to a far more open one. Actually - in that respect they are similar to Fidelity!
The big difference though is their agent network. In China being an agent is often a small at-home business. An adjunct for many to other kinds of work - a part-time role - think about the way some people participate in party plan selling, or selling make-up, here in New Zealand.
The idea of full-time, full-service, financial advisers is still relatively new. The revolution is one worth remembering - because once upon a time it was a revolution here, too. The long-run theme here is efficiency. A full time adviser is more efficient than a clutch of part-timers. It also runs that a collection of advisers organised in a financial advisory business may be a lot more efficient than lots of individuals. That's what's been happening with the continuing emergence of dealers, aggregators, and bancassurers.
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Comments from our readers
Some bank insurance managers writing excess of 400k.I would guess that person/people is in a main city. And prospecting would be nil as clients are walking in the door (in their thousands).Minimal insurance analysis would be done! (Thats what they do in banks from my experience).And probably they write the client on 1st appointment by making the client feel obliged that they have to do the business with them because there is some sort of loan at stake. Now is that good selling. No brainer there.Does the bank insurance salesman offer up the options to the said client with various companies, I think not.No he/she will flog the product as inferior as it is to the bank client, and they the client will be none the wiser this will be after they have canned an existing policy done by a proper broker.Had it done to me, it is amazing the power of a mortgage ready to be approved. No disrespect to get real but there are always two sides to a story.This past year I have been doing exams in relation to this compliance and I have not really seen to many partimers to be honest. As as bank insurance insurance salespeople wont be doing because they are under the QFE umbrella.
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