83,700 new agents join life insurance last fiscal

Attractive commission payouts and a robust agency recruitment process of life insurance companies have led to 83,700 individuals taking up insurance agency last fiscal.

The latest data released by Life Insurance Council (LIC), the industry trade body shows that the life insurance industry has close to 22.78 lakh agents as on March 2020 as against 21.94 lakh agent in March 2019.

While LIC India has alone added close to 30,000 agents last fiscal, their private counterparts saw an addition of 54,122 new distributors.

Among the private players, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance has clocked the highest number of agents- 20352 new agents followed by HDFC Life (16490) and Edelweiss Tokio Life (8042).

Vighnesh Shahane CEO and MD, IDBI Federal Life Insurance told Cafemutual that many life insurance companies which are promoted by banks have realized that they have to diversify their distribution channel to grow business. He said, “We cannot just rely on our bancassurance channel. It is a huge business risk if anything happens to the bank. Hence, many companies have started investing in strengthening their agency force to grow business.”

Bajaj Allianz Life’s Chief Agency Officer Sameer Joshi said that around 83,000 agents were recruited by the industry in FY 2019-20, and this was inspite of the substantial churning of agents that happens each year.  He said that many companies have strengthened agent recruitment teams to attract more individuals to take up insurance distribution as full time career.

Talking about how covid-19 has affected the agent recruitment process, he said, “Considering the new realities that we are facing where social distancing may be a norm and meetings would be tough, the industry is moving our customer engagements with agents to more digital channels. In fact, we’ve already traversed a great distance by having an agency channel that’s almost 100% digital - from their recruitment to selling to customers to servicing them, all happens via digital modes. We are now investing towards making these agents more efficient in using digital and virtual tools to stay engaged with customers and sell to them. In the long run, I believe this would benefit everyone in the industry and build efficiencies.”

Agents dominate life insurance sales as they channelize a lion’s share of the industry’s new business premium. Insurance agents sold six out of ten life insurance policies (new individual business policies) in FY 2018-19, according to annual report published by IRDAI. Of the total new business premium of Rs.2.15 lakh crore, agents brought in Rs. 1.33 lakh crore to the life insurance industry in 2018-19.

Total no. of life insurance agents

Source: Life Insurance Council