The number of traditional insurance salespeople has recently decreased as the global financial crisis cost many of them their jobs and other distribution channels have gained popularity here.
The Korea Life Insurance Association (KLIA) said Friday that the number of insurance salespeople, called life planners here, that have joined the Seoul-based organization was 149,191 as of January 2011.
The nation’s top three life insurers of Samsung, Korea and Kyobo combined to account for 54.8 percent of them at 81,721.
By region, Seoul had the most life planners with 61,442, accounting for 41.2 percent of the overall figures followed by Gyeonggi Province and Busan, which had 15,479 and 13,653 respectively.
The presence of life planners steadily strengthened from January 2006, when they tallied 123,000, and peaked at 176,090 in December 2008 before declining for 25 straight months.
Observers say that the financial turmoil in late 2008 and emerging bancassurance are most responsible for the decrease in the number of the jobs.
When the unprecedented economic downturn hit the life insurance sector in late 2008, a lot of planners quit the industry.
“As insurance is protection against future losses, customers tend to cancel their insurance policies during crises,” said a Seoul-based economist, who asked not to be named.
Unlike major local insurance firms, foreign-based insurers have trouble nurturing competitive life planners, so they depend on bancassurance and other alternative channels like direct marketing and telemarketing.
The statistics demonstrate the trend of turning to complementary marketing tools as bancassurance registered a steep increase in profits.
Life insurance firms raked in 4.47 trillion won ($4.1 billion) in bancassurance sales between April 2010 and January 2011, up 77.8 percent from a year ago.
The number of female planners fell at a much faster pace compared to their male counterparts.
Male planners represented 16.1 percent of the overall agency forces in January 2006, but the rate substantially rose to reach 27 percent this January, at 40,210.
Females were an indispensable part of the insurance industry as they dominated the sales field more than anywhere else, but things changed after the advent of foreign life insurers, which preferred male, college educated and professional financial consultants.
The industry expects that the trend will continue as the market is projected to grow.
“Beyond the mere sales of insurance policies, insurance companies will focus on more professional areas including financial consulting, the segment that currently employs more males than females,’’ said an official of a local life insurer.
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