PETALING JAYA: Selling insurance based on the needs and the ability of a person to pay is key to determining the successful sale of a policy amid the gloomy economic outlook.

Hong Leong Assurance Bhd (HLA) top agent for 2007/2008 Winnie Tay, who has been in the industry for more than 35 years, said agents aspiring to be successful in these challenging times must assess customers’ needs and explain why a specific product suited them or their kin.

“Protection, either for themselves or their businesses, is paramount in times of crisis. An agent must explain to his clients that protection is necessary, be it in good or bad times, as it will benefit them and their families moving forward.

From left: Danny Then, Winnie Tay, Wini Roswita Abdullah, May Lee and Michael Tan. Seated from left are Hong Leong Assurance CEO Charlie Oropeza and chief operating officer (life division) Loh Guat Lan.

“Agents should all the more now educate people on the need to be insured so that they won’t be caught ‘off guard’ when faced with an unexpected event,’’ she told StarBiz.

Tay collected RM1.34mil first year premium and also achieved the highest recognition for an agent who is Top of the Table (TOT) in a short span of two to three months as opposed to a year. The TOT is the highest award given to an agent.

Sharing similar views with Tay, the company’s top bumiputra agent, Wini Roswita Abdullah, said she believed in need-based selling and according to one’s ability to take the policy.

“Not everyone warms up fast to the idea of buying insurance. So I make sure I don’t come across as just selling any other product. Instead, I offer my customers protection, savings and the right products that meet their risk appetite, needs and affordability.”

Top agency manager May Lee, who created the company’s record with first year premiums amounting to RM3.55mil, said this was the best time to educate consumers about the value of insurance.

She said even during the financial crisis in 1997, when she was an agent then, she managed to overcome all odds and became a top agent.

“I advise my clients that an economic downturn is only temporary and they should do financial planning. No product, in my opinion, can replace insurance as it helps in protection, savings and retirement.”

On recruitment of agents in these trying times, HLA’s Master Builder Award (MBA) champion Michael Tan said he viewed it as an opportunity to hire quality agents.

MBA is an award to acknowledge an agency manager’s successful recruitment and development of a pool of quality agents.

Tan said even in the midst of a global financial crisis, he had recruited some quality agents who he felt had the potential to be top agents.

“Those who are retrenched or has plans to look for another job should consider insurance as a choice as it gives them flexibility and better control of their lives and, at the same time, boost their lifestyle.”

Concurring with Tan, top unit manager Danny Then said: “I encourage my agents to look at a crisis as an opportunity to learn and gain from it. I also encourage them to increase their activities to educate the public on the benefits of insurance.”

It cites transformation strategies for the jump in third quarter

PETALING JAYA: Prudential Assurance Malaysia Bhd (Prudential Malaysia) has attributed its double-digit growth in new business premiums in the third quarter to the success of its “transformation” strategies.

The insurer registered a 33% growth in new business premiums to RM181mil for the third quarter ended September 2008 compared with the previous corresponding period.

Total new business premiums for the first nine months were RM451mil, up 20% from a year earlier.

Prudential Malaysia was the top insurer in terms of new business sales for the first half of 2008, with 13% growth and 21% market share, according to chief executive officer Bill Lisle.

Lisle said the insurer’s strategies for transformation focused on a number of key areas, such as adding wealth planning services, and leveraging on technology and branding initiatives.

Bill Lisle

“Transforming our agency force to wealth planners is a huge step for us as it will allow the company to have our internal equivalent of financial advisors, who will be able to provide a wide range of financial products such as life insurance, unit trust, takaful, general insurance, health and retirement solutions.

“This will make our wealth planners a complete one-stop financial solutions provider,’’ he told StarBiz in an e-mail reply.

Prudential Malaysia currently has a total agency strength of over 9,000.

Leveraging on technology was another key move. In July, the company launched PRUway, a point-of-sales system which has revolutionised the way the company does business and build relationships with customers.

The system has enabled its 1,030-plus wealth planners to transact business anytime, anywhere, using high-tech laptops and digital signature capture software.

Using the system, sales personnel can now perform presentations and submit proposals online to the head office for immediate processing, thus reducing turnaround time drastically and boosting efficiency.

Prudential Malaysia’s aggressive branding has also driven growth, especially its ‘The Face You Can Trust’ campaign, which was launched in early June.

“The campaign was not only well received by our customers, but also by our agents who told us in an internal survey conducted recently that it had contributed to their sales,” Lisle said.

From football pro in training to the CEO of Prudential Assurance Malaysia Bhd, Bill Lisle tells us why it was cool to clean football boots and why insurance agents are the most rejected lot.

LOOKING at Bill Lisle in his suit, it is pretty hard to imagine this charming 43-year old British man had once called jerseys and football boots his uniform. “I was a junior in the Newcastle United Football Club. Growing up in a place like Newcastle, every boy wants to grow up to play for his local football club,” he says.

Bill was only 13 then when his grandfather got him the entrance audition. He passed and as a junior, spent two years training and “cleaning football boots”.

“It was quite a thrill … on Saturdays, while watching the match with my friends, I’d tell them ‘Hey so and so scored! I cleaned his boots’,” he laughs.

It wasn’t long before he realised that he was not cut out to be a professional footballer and called it quits. “It was clear that some guys really had talent (and some didn’t). I felt like I had disappointed my grandfather when I dropped out,” he says. But Bill continued playing football for his school and did some coaching later in life.

“Football had taught me teamwork and passion. I guess I took that and used it in the work place,” he says. He eventually hung his boots up because he felt he had “too many injuries, was too old and too slow”.

New direction

When his football career did not work out, Bill continued his studies and graduated as a mechanical engineer. But a slight twist of fate crashed that dream as well. “I wanted to apply for a job as an aviation engineer but because of an eye injury I could not pass the medical test,” he says.

His foray into insurance was really by chance. “I think I answered one of those corny recruitment ads. ‘Drive your own Porsche in a year’ or ‘Earn £1000 a week’ or something like that. I started out as an insurance agent,” he grins.

Bill’s enthusiasm for the job is amazingly passionate. According to him, insurance agents are often misunderstood. “Insurance agents are like your TV salesman, they are selling you a product. But I don’t understand why we get rejected all the time. When I started selling policies, I lost some friends. It’s funny that suddenly no one wants to pick up your phone calls. I can bet you that insurance agents face more rejection than any other salesmen in any other industry,” he says.

But he persevered and three months into his job, he got his first true sense of satisfaction.

“I have to admit that I was in it for the money at first. Then, one of my clients got into a bad accident and couldn’t walk for the rest of his life. When I handed him his claims cheque, I realised that the rest of this man’s life will be taken care of because he bought a policy from me and paid four payments. With that money, he bought a single-storey bungalow and equipped it with ramps so he could move around easily in his newly-bought wheelchair.

“He even invited me to dinner once and passed me the remainder of the money (from his insurance claim) and asked me to invest the money for him. I was touched that he trusted me so much,” he says, adding that selling insurance is like giving people hope. “We protect people,” he adds.

Next step

That was the starting point of Bill’s career. He eventually climbed up the corporate ladder as Prudential’s director of agency development for South Asia based in Hong Kong in 2001. And in 2002 he was appointed chief agency officer of ICICI Prudential, India. After two years in India, he was appointed general manager in Malaysia. A year later, he was posted to South Korea and after two years, he returned to Malaysia.

“I love Malaysia. I call Malaysia my home. I was truly lucky that I was able to come back to Malaysia so soon. My daughter was born here and there are just so many good memories here,” he says. According to Bill, his South Korean wife loves it here too. “There is such a big community of Koreans here, it feels almost like home for her,” he laughs.

Local food is his absolute favourite but there is one thing he cannot stand. “I love my nasi lemak, roti canai and mee mamak but I will stop at durians,” he says. He laments that he has gained a few kilos in Malaysia. “I had lost almost 28kg when I was in Korea by going to the gym and maintaining a healthy diet,” he says.

The turning point came when he saw himself in a corporate video: “I knew I had to do something about my weight.”

What really matters

What really matters for Bill now is educate people about insurance. “I bet you are not insured enough,” he says. According to him, most Malaysians don’t have a retirement plan. In fact, 73% of them don’t. And 33% of us don’t know how much we need to have for a comfortable retirement. “Do you know that your EPF contributions could only last you three years after you retire? And wouldn’t you want to retire comfortably in a nice home with enough to spend without having to worry about medical bills and such?” he says.

Comparing the Malaysian insurance market with South Korea, the latter grew much faster. During Bill’s two-year tenure in South Korea, PCA Life Insurance doubled its new business annual premiums from US$260mil in 2005 to US$520mil in 2007.

Part of the challenge he faced during his stint in Korea was cultural: “I had three translators following me at all times. Each translated a little differently and that, at times, stirred some misunderstandings.”

Family First

On the home front, Bill’s family is into golf. “I love playing golf in Phuket and my wife actually plays much more than I do here in Malaysia. I usually play twice a month. My three and a half year old daughter is also learning how to play now,” he says and adds that golf can help instill discipline in children. This veteran golfer started playing golf even before he started playing football.

“My parents were golfers so I guess I learnt it from them. As for my own family, I should just have another child and we have a full flight,” he says with a laugh. Bill frequently visits his parents in England. “The weather in UK is just so dreary. The moment you land in Heathrow airport you’ll see miserable looking people. How I wish I could convince my parents to visit Malaysia. They have never been on a plane,” he says.

Bill says his friends in his home country have a really “warped perception of Asia”. “To them, Hong Kong is still all trishaws and junks. These are the same people who have been to the same vacation spot for the past 20 years. I feel like bundling them into the plane and flying them over here to see how it’s like here,” he chuckles.

As for football, Bill has stopped playing a few years ago. “The last time I played was when Prudential Korea brought a group of orphans to a football camp. I had so much fun coaching the children. Hopefully, Prudential Malaysia can do something like this soon,” he says

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The government’s decision to adopt this measure to help Malaysians tide the rise in prices of goods and services and the economic downturn is heartily welcomed by those in the lower income group and struggling to pay bills.

But there are many who prefer to stick to the 11% deduction and tighten their belts momentarily.

This group is also irked by the “burden” of having to fill up an EPF form – those who do not will be deemed to be agreeable to contributing 8% for two years effective Jan 1.

Under the new scheme, a 35-year-old employee with a RM3,000 monthly salary would be able to take home an extra RM90 in his monthly pay packet, which

amounts to RM2,160 over two years.

However, assuming that a 5% dividend is paid out annually with the compound element over a period of 20 years until he turns 55, he will be RM5,500 “poorer” when he retires.

If his monthly income for the next two years is RM5,000, he would lose out on a total savings of RM9,200 in his EPF upon retirement.

As it is, the EPF has raised concerns about Malaysians not having enough savings to see them through 20 years past retirement, much less lead a comfortable life.

In a study by the EPF last year, the average contributor has only RM106,000 in his savings while one would need a projected sum of about RM747,000 (taking into consideration inflation rates) if one were to live for 25 years after retirement.

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The insurer’s new business annual premium equivalent (NBAPE), which included
Takaful sales, stood at RM181 million for the third quarter ending September 30. This represents
a significant increase over the RM136 million recorded in the same quarter of 2007. Its total
NBAPE sales for the first nine months were RM451 million, up 20% on a year earlier.

Commenting, Bill Lisle, Chief Executive Officer of Prudential Malaysia said: “We are very proud to
be able to deliver yet another strong performance, particularly given the challenging economic
environment that we faced in recent weeks.” Lisle attributed the company’s high double-digit
growth to the effectiveness of a transformation programme, which was implemented since April
this year to help propel the established 84-year-old business to achieve quantum leap results by
2010. On Tuesday (October 21), Prudential plc released its 2008 third quarter new business
results where the total Group insurance sales for the first nine months were up 15% compared
with the same period last year.

Chief executive officer Bill Lisle said the firm had implemented good corporate governance such as undertaking risk management and was confident of weathering the global crisis.

“We are in very good shape. We registered a high double-digit growth in new business premium for the third quarter ended Sept 30,” he told reporters after a briefing on the Prudential Retire-Meter 2008 survey results yesterday.

He said the company had not changed its strategic perspective and would continue to focus on its existing strategies.

Asked on the impact of the global crisis, he said the insurance industry globally had been affected in terms of confidence despite having strong fundamentals.

However, he said Prudential plc had minimal exposure in the US subprime market.

On speculation by the British media that Prudential plc would have a rights issue to raise more funds, Lisle said: “Prudential has surplus capital amounting to £1.2bil, so we are robust from the cash perspective. We have the ability to bring in more cash and we do not need any rights issue.”

He said it was possible for the global insurance industry to consolidate as it was affected by the financial crisis.

On the Prudential Retire-Meter 2008 survey, Lisle said 36% of those nearing retirement (those aged between 45 and 55) were less confident compared to a year ago due to the higher cost of living, while 81% felt that inflation had a substantial effect on their lifestyle.

“About 48% of those polled expressed concerns that they would not have enough money to take care of their retirement needs. Our survey found that although Malaysians have a high propensity to save, their current savings behaviour indicates a lack of proper planning,” he said.

He added that Malaysians were generally aware of the importance of having a sound retirement plan but most did not have a disciplined approach to retirement savings.

Prudential commissioned Research International, a global research agency, to conduct the survey, which covered key urban areas in Malaysia.

1. Reminder of Confidentiality. “George, there’s one thing I want to run by you. Many of my clients like to introduce me to others whom they think should know about the important work I do. I just wanted you to know that should that opportunity present itself to you, the work we do is always kept completely confidential. They will never learn about your financial situation from me and vice versa. Does that make sense?”

2. Who You Serve the Best. “George and Martha, there’s something I want to mention to you. Many of my clients like to introduce me to others whom they think should know about the important work I do. Should that ever come up for you, it’s good for you to know for whom our processes are best suited. These days, our practice is geared toward successful couples like yourself. They usually have children, but not always. Generally they have a combined income of over $100,000 - some of my clients are even in the $400,000 range and more. While I don’t expect you to know someone’s exact financial situation, you probably have a sense. Does this make sense?” [Note: Your profile range may be different, but you get the idea.]

3. How I’ll Contact Them. “Randy, quite often my clients like to recommend the work I do to others whom they care about. Should that ever come up for you, I thought you should know how I usually like to handle those situations. First of all, I don’t like to surprise people with a phone call from out of the blue. I’ve found that everyone seems to feel most comfortable when they know I’ll be contacting them and have a sense of why.

“So, if you identify someone you think I should contact, please come to me first. Together, we’ll figure out the best way for us to approach them. We’ll do it in a way that suits your relationship and feels comfortable and natural to everyone. If they are interested, we’ll likely meet for a no-obligation review - as you and I did initially. If they decide they don’t care to move forward, I assure you I won’t pressure them or become a pest. That’s just not my style. How does all this sound?”

4. “Don’t Keep Me a Secret.” I’ve been teaching this simple phrase for over a dozen years and I’ve been impressed with two things: 1) how many financial professionals are using this phrase with great success; 2) how often it results in a referral conversation right on the spot. It never hurts a relationship.

5. Willingness to Give Referrals. This is a great technique to get a referral conversation going with anyone who is a small business owner, salesperson, or anyone who needs referrals for their business. “Frank, you sound like you do pretty good work for your clients. Tell me, if I ran into a good prospect for your business, how would I know it and how would you like me to introduce them to you?”

6. Celebrate Referrals. Every time you meet a new prospect through a referral, celebrate it. Talk about the person you know in common.

7. Who Should I Thank? Put the following message on your voice mail. “This is Mike Smith. Sorry I missed your call. Please leave a message at the tone. And if you were referred to us, please let us know who we need to thank.” This sends the message to all who call you that you get referrals on a regular basis - you are referable, and that you have an attitude of gratitude.

8. Never Too Busy. Here’s a simple one. Just say to your clients “I’m never too busy to see if I can help your friends, family, or colleagues with the important work I do.”

9. Earn the Right. Tell your clients something like the following (early in the relationship), “One of the ways I know I’m doing a good job for my clients is when they tell others about me. I know the only way that happens is from me providing first class advice and first class service, and I hope that at some point, you will trust me and the work I do well enough to tell others. Fair enough?”

10. By Referral Only. Have “By Referral Only” printed onto your business card. When you hand someone your card, write those words on it. It sends the message of importance and exclusivity.

It’s important that you’re not obnoxious about asking for referrals, and it’s equally important that you find soft ways to keep the topic lively in your clients’ awareness. Promoting referrals in the above ways will do just that. You’ll never hurt a relationship, you’ll plant a very powerful seed that can bear fruit later, and you will often walk away with referrals on the spot.