Thanks to the joint efforts of the regulator and life insurance companies, the on-going agent attrition problem in the life insurance space has marginally subsided.
The life insurance industry has added close to 10,300 agents to its agency force in April-September 2017 taking the total count to 20.99 lakh.
The total life agency force went up from 20.88 lakh in April 2017 to 20.99 lakh in September 2017. IRDAI has raised concerns about the high level of attrition among insurance agents. In fact, in its 2015-16 Annual report, it said high attrition might adversely affect life insurance business, policy persistency and public perception of the agency channel as a stable career. To check this attrition, it has constantly been making efforts by increasing incentives of distributors, reducing pass percentage, quality training and encouraging cross-selling opportunities.
While the total life agency force has increased, state owned LIC India, lost around 4,000 agents in the past six months. It added around 1.10 lakh agents while it terminated 1.14 lakh agents in Q2 FY 2017-18. However, experts believe that this attrition is good for LIC as the management is keen on reducing its expenses on inactive agents.
On the other hand, private players added close to 1.61 lakh agents in the April-September period, they terminated 1.46 lakh agents.