Reporter of Meijing: Tu Yinghao Editor of Meijing: Chen Xing
In the context of stricter supervision and slowing down in demographic dividend, the agent model of "people sea tactics" is unsustainable. The shift from scale growth to an increase in per capita production capacity is the core driving force for enhancing the business value of life insurance companies.
With the continuous disclosure of annual reports, the reporter of "Daily Economic News" noticed that the scale of agents of some large life insurance companies experienced an unprecedented decline in manpower last year. According to the annual report data of each company, as of the end of 2019, the number of agents of Ping An life insurance , Taibao Life Insurance and Taiping Life Insurance decreased by 120,000, 57,000 and 127,000 respectively compared with the end of 2018.
At the same time, the other three listed life insurance companies represented by China Life Insurance have grown against the trend. As of the end of 2019, China Life Insurance, Xinhua Insurance , and PICC life insurance agents increased by 174,000, 137,000, and 145,000 respectively. After
increased and decreased, the gap in the number of agents of the two major life insurance giants - China Life and Ping An Life increased from 119,000 at the end of 2018 to 413,000. In 2019, the total number of agents of the six listed life insurance companies increased by 3.2% year-on-year.
Ping An Life Insurance Agent Scale reduced
In 2019, the negative growth in the scale of agents of large life insurance companies represented by Ping An was also the first turning point in the scale of agents in recent years.
Specifically, Ping An Life Insurance agents were 1.2 million, a year-on-year decrease of 9.1%; Taiping Life Insurance was 790,000, a year-on-year decrease of 6.7%; Taiping Life Insurance had 386,000 individual agents, a year-on-year decrease of 127,000, a year-on-year decrease of 24.8%.
This is closely related to the reform of agent channels in large companies. In 2019, China Taibao clearly proposed to "clear and empty" agent channels: cultivate three types of teams: "core human resources", "top performance" and "new generation", and at the same time use technology empowerment to promote the transformation of agent channels.
At the 2019 performance conference of China Taiping Insurance, Pan Yanhong, general manager of Taiping Insurance, said that agent transformation work is the first priority transformation project at the group level. At present, the work of path planning, plan formulation, and refinement of measures has been completed, and we are making every effort to promote the transformation of agents.
Since the reform of life insurance channel was launched in the second half of 2018, Ping An's agent strategy has shifted from the traditional "human sea strategy" to the "healthy sea of people", and signs of slowing growth in the number of agents have long been revealed.
"Daily Economic News" reporter noticed that according to China Ping An annual report data, as of the end of 2018, Ping An's agent scale only increased by 2.3% from the beginning of the year to 1.4174 million. By the first half of 2019, the number of agents dropped to 1.286 million, which had already seen negative year-on-year growth.
It is reported that the life insurance reform leading group established by Ping An internally is headed by Ping An Chairman of China Ping An Ma Mingzhe . At the 2019 performance conference, Ma Mingzhe explained the roadmap for the first time in life insurance reform, upgrading the past "healthy sea of people" to the pursuit of quality and agent income in the agency channel, and proposed to seek breakthroughs in the Internet insurance channel.
Ma Mingzhe pointed out: "From the previous year, we found that the life insurance market has undergone great changes, including market, environment, and consumer demand. The original traditional model has gradually become unacceptable to the new demand. Although Ping An Life Insurance's agent income is nearly twice the market average, it is still not enough in the next three to five years."
From the perspective of agent income, in 2019, Ping An Life Insurance agent income per person was 6,309 yuan per month, a slight increase year-on-year.
China Life agent scale has grown against the trend
While the scale of agents of some traditional life insurance companies has been reduced, the counter-trend growth of China Life agent scale has become a sharp contrast. As of the end of 2019, the size of China Life's personal insurance channel team was 1.613 million, an increase of 12.1% from the end of 2018. After
increased and decreased, the gap in the size of agents of the two giants China Life and Ping An Life quickly widened by more than 410,000. In 2018, the difference in agents between the two companies was only 119,000.
In terms of the value of new business, in 2019, China Life Insurance achieved a new business value of 58.698 billion yuan in one year, an increase of 18.6% year-on-year; the annual new business value rate of individual insurance channels was 45.3%, an increase of 3.2 percentage points year-on-year.Ping An Life Insurance achieved a new business value of 75.945 billion yuan in one year, an increase of 5.1% year-on-year; the value rate of new business was 47.3%, an increase of 3.6 percentage points year-on-year. The value rate of new business in the agent channel was 64.9%, an increase of 7.8 percentage points year-on-year.
From other comparable indicators, the policy continued rate of the two life insurance giants declined in 2019. China Life Insurance's 14-month and 26-month policy continuation rates fell by 4.3 and 0.1 percentage points to 86.8% and 85.9% respectively; Ping An Life Insurance's 13-month and 25-month policy continuation rates fell by 3.6 and 1.1 percentage points to 87.8% and 87.1% respectively.
"Daily Economic News" reporter also noticed that while the agency channel manpower increased, the number of salesmen in other channels of China Life Insurance has shown a decline.
As of the end of 2019, China Life Insurance's bank insurance channel sales personnel were 166,000, a year-on-year decrease of 32%; group insurance sales personnel were 65,500, a year-on-year decrease of 21%. In addition, the China Insurance Industry Association recently disclosed an analysis report on the development situation of the life insurance telemarketing industry in 2019, saying that China Life Insurance has withdrawn from the telemarketing market in 2019.
The number of agents soared. Xinhua insurance and PICC life insurance are also among the companies that have soared. In 2019, Xinhua Insurance's manpower reached 507,000, a year-on-year increase of 37%. Management said that it had achieved a development goal that had not been achieved in many years. Because "the revision of the Basic Law of Marketers, the retention of newcomers has been greatly improved, laying a solid labor base for business growth in 2020." As of December 31, 2019, the number of PICC Life Insurance's salesmen was 391,000, a year-on-year increase of 59.2%.
From the perspective of new business value, Xinhua Insurance achieved a new business value of 9.779 billion yuan in one year, a year-on-year decrease of 19.9%, and the new business value rate was 30.3%, a year-on-year decrease of 17.6 percentage points. PICC Life Insurance achieved a new business value of 6.791 billion yuan in one year, an increase of 8.8% year-on-year.
Daily Economic News
