AIA continues to believe in the strategic importance of agents in the insurance selling process, particularly here in Asia where the benefits of personal interaction still outweighs the perks of automation.
“By interacting with the client face to face, we will be able to understand the family situation, his or her long-term planning and also health condition better than what a machine can do,” said Mr Joe Cheng, CEO of Group Agency, AIA.
He was speaking to Asia Insurance Review on the sidelines of AIA’s Grand Summit, where 2,000 of its top agents congregated in London for a Gala evening (see sidebar) to mark the success of the Group’s Premier Agency strategy – unveiled in 2010 after the company went public in Hong Kong.
Breaking records with MDRT
The success of the Premier Agency strategy has been underlined by the fact that AIA achieved the world’s largest number of Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT) members for two straight years in 2015 and 2016 – the first time a company has come out top in consecutive years in the MDRT’s 89-year history.
A total of 5,687 AIA agents and agency leaders qualified as MDRT members as of 1 August 2016, representing an increase of over 47% in members of this elite group from 2015.
“As a comparison, we were only ranked 7th in the world for MDRT in 2011, so the Premier Agency strategy has had an effect in developing premier agents,” said Mr Cheng.
He explained the Premier Agency approach consists of three core areas, mainly quality recruitment through a careful selection process, providing the best training, and investing heavily in technology to support the agency force.
“We hope to maintain a constant and stable agency force by constantly improving the performance standard,” he said.
A targeted approach
AIA customises the training of its agents to suit the needs of various demographic segments. For example, in order to better recruit and retain younger agents, the company set up the AIA Premier Academy to provide customised training for those below 35 years of age.
“These are graduates with either no insurance experience or less than two years of experience and we train them up from Day 1 to become an MDRT.
“Adopting a segmented approach in recruitment and training doesn’t mean that we only recruit the young or well-educated. Our segmented approach means we recruit people of different ages, education background, and work experience and we apply different segmented training to help them to grow. And this is one of the things which differentiates us,” he said.
Approximately 30% of AIA’s MDRT members are below 35 years old; while 25% of its active agents across the region are below the age of 30, added Mr Cheng.
Incentivise best practices
Helping agents achieve MDRT status is not only a matter of generating large premium volumes, but ultimately relates to promoting good customer service, conduct and professional ethics, said Mr Cheng.
“You don’t qualify for MDRT only based on income or premium, but it also relates to relationship with clients and continuous learning. So when we promote MDRT, we adopt the whole-person concept instead of just chasing after premium or income which is a very short-term plan.”
Aside from ongoing investments in training and technology, moving forward, a focus would be on further improving customer service, said Mr Cheng. In this regard, AIA plans to focus on “Ease of Doing Business (EoDB)” to improve ways for customers to interact with the company. Examples include the convenience of e-claims, and creating more touchpoints for customers to reach out to the company.
“A lot of young people are tech-savvy and would like to communicate through their personal devices. So we’re building an infrastructure that can help draw our agents closer to clients and thus build up the agents’ capabilities to interact better with clients,” he said.