In July, 2005, the CIRC issued the document "Notice on Issues Concerning Regulating the Operation Behavior of Group Insurance", in which Article 8 clearly stipulates: "The salesmen of insurance companies can sell group insurance products. Insurance companies should train them in group insurance expertise and relevant laws and regulations, and it is strictly forbidden to mislead or defraud the insured or the insured. " The insurance salesman's behavior of selling group insurance was officially legalized. How to choose the cross-selling strategy of group insurance products for individual insurance sales team has become an unavoidable problem before us.
From the perspective of life insurance companies, it is not appropriate to encourage individual insurance sales teams to sell group insurance products. The main reasons include the following aspects:
(1) Encouraging insurance salesmen to sell group insurance may seriously affect the sales of individual insurance products.
Different from property insurance products and personal life insurance products such as auto insurance and family property insurance, it can realize cross-selling and improve customer value satisfaction. The existing group insurance products and individual insurance products are more representative of alternative features in function, and cross-selling cannot improve customer satisfaction. Faced with two group insurance products and individual insurance products with highly overlapping functions, customers who meet the insurance conditions will only choose one of them in more cases.
Judging from the predetermined interest rate and dividend level of the policy, group insurance products are more competitive than individual insurance products. The predetermined interest rate of group insurance products is generally higher than that of individual insurance products, and the dividend level of group insurance products is generally higher than that of similar products of individual insurance. Customers are more willing to accept group insurance.
According to the notice, the original definition of group insurance was changed from "8 people" to "members of a specific group with more than 5 people" and relaxed to "including spouses, children and parents of members". Insurance coverage is expanded, and more customers who can only buy personal insurance products will meet the insurance conditions of group insurance. If the company encourages insurance salesmen to sell group insurance from the aspects of system design and publicity, it is likely to have a serious impact on the sales of individual insurance products.
(2) Encouraging insurance salesmen to sell group insurance is not conducive to the professional operation of the group insurance business itself.
Group insurance sales and individual insurance sales are quite different in exhibition mode, management mode and personnel quality requirements. Encouraging insurance salesmen to sell group insurance is not conducive to the professional operation of group insurance business itself.
First of all, different from the "single soldier" mode of individual insurance business development, group insurance products, especially annuity products, are often sold by team. A sales manager with 3-4 assistant sales staff. The sales manager has strong ability and rich experience in underwriting ability, sales ability, communication ability and negotiation ability, maintains a good relationship with customers, and finds and analyzes customers' insurance and financial needs with the support of auxiliary personnel.
Secondly, unlike the practice that individual insurance sales and customer service are relatively independent, according to international practice, group insurance business often adopts the way of integration of sales and operation, and the business processing and customer service of group insurance are often solved jointly by the group insurance department. On the one hand, it can make risk assessment (underwriting) precede in the sales process, which is conducive to risk control; On the other hand, due to the particularity of underwriting and business handling of group insurance, the backup service of group insurance cannot be provided by other operating departments of life insurance companies.
In addition, the public relations level of group insurance sales and exhibition industry is high and difficult, which requires salespeople to have considerable breadth and depth of knowledge and skills. It involves a lot of profound professional knowledge, including statistics, actuarial science, finance, taxation, management, psychology and so on. Sometimes it even needs to turn to professionals inside and outside the company to form a "key project team" to complete it. The existing training course system and teaching staff of individual insurance salesmen can't meet this demand.
(3) Encouraging insurance salesmen to sell group insurance will greatly increase the difficulty of risk management and control of salesmen, and it is difficult to guarantee the quality of business.
Different from the staff management of group insurance sales team, individual insurance salesmen adopt the management system of principal-agent relationship. Insurance salesmen sign business agency contracts with insurance companies, and the insurance salesmen draw commissions according to their performance. General companies will not provide them with basic wages, benefits and security. Under this institutional arrangement, insurance companies and agents are only a loose economic interest relationship, lacking an effective restraint mechanism, and insurance marketers are prone to fraud and misleading customers in pursuit of maximizing their own interests. Compared with individual customers, group customers cover a wide range, and their influence and ability are great. If misleading or fraudulent events occur, the consequences will be far greater than individual customers.
Compared with group insurance salesmen, individual insurance salesmen are more mobile, the quality of follow-up customer service is difficult to guarantee, and the risk of surrender of group insurance business will be much greater than that of individual insurance business. And once out of danger, the possibility of winning customers again is very complicated. In the sales of group insurance, the examination and circulation of the insured, the insured and the documents is far more complicated than that of life insurance, and the technical ability and moral level of the salesman as the first insurer are far higher than that of life insurance. Encouraging insurance salesmen to sell group insurance will make it difficult to guarantee the quality of group insurance business.
When insurance salesmen find potential group insurance customers in the exhibition industry, the more reliable way is to adopt the form of recommending group insurance business by the salesmen: after collecting the information, the salesmen return to the company to provide the information to the person in charge of the group insurance business department, and make detailed records, so that the group insurance salesmen of the company can further contact and negotiate with the customers. Once the insurance policy is signed, the salesman can be rewarded according to the prior regulations.
Using this method will not lose valuable business information to the company, and the business quality of the group insurance policy can be guaranteed. At the same time, the channel division is clear, which reduces the possibility that the simple comparison caused by customers buying group insurance products and individual insurance products from a salesperson will affect the sales of similar individual insurance products to some extent.
Further reading: How to buy insurance, which is good, and teach you how to avoid these "pits" of insurance.