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Under the background of stricter supervision and slowing down of demographic dividends, the agent model of "human sea tactics" is unsustainable. The core driver of business value for life insurance companies.
As the annual reports were disclosed one after another, the reporter of "Daily Economic News" noticed that the scale of agents of some large life insurance companies had an unprecedented decline in manpower last year. According to the data of various annual reports, as of the end of 2019, the number of agents of Ping An Life Insurance , CPIC 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 have grown against the trend. As of the end of 2019, China Life, Xinhua Insurance, and PICC life insurance agents have 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 Insurance and Ping An Life Insurance, increased from 119,000 at the end of 2018 to 413,000. In 2019, the total number of agents of the six largest listed life insurance companies increased by 3.2% year-on-year.
Ping An life insurance agency scale down
In 2019, the scale of agents of large life insurance companies represented by Ping An experienced negative growth, which was also the first turning point in the scale of agents in recent years.
Specifically, Ping An Life Insurance had 1.2 million agents, a year-on-year decrease of 9.1%; CPIC Life Insurance had 790,000 agents, a year-on-year decrease of 6.7%; Taiping Life Insurance had 386,000 personal agents, a year-on-year decrease of 127,000, a decrease of 24.8%.
This is inseparable from the agency channel reform of large companies. In 2019, China Pacific Insurance clearly stated that the agency channel should be “clear”: to cultivate three types of teams: “core manpower”, “top performers” and “new generation”, and at the same time promote the transformation of the agency channel with the help of technological empowerment.
At the China Pacific Insurance 2019 performance conference, Pan Yanhong, general manager of CPIC Life Insurance, said that the transformation of agents is the top priority transformation project at the group level. At present, the path planning, program formulation, and measure refinement have been completed, and we are going all out to promote the transformation of agents.
Since the launch of the life insurance channel reform in the second half of 2018, Ping An's agent strategy has shifted from the traditional "human sea strategy" to "healthy human sea", and signs of slowing growth in the number of agents have already appeared.
The reporter of "Daily Economic News" noticed that according to the data of Ping An's annual report, as of the end of 2018, the number of Ping An's agents increased by only 2.3% compared with the beginning of the year to 1.4174 million. By the first half of 2019, the number of agents had dropped to 1.286 million , there has been a year-on-year negative growth.
It is reported that the life insurance reform leading group established within Ping An is headed by Ma Mingzhe, chairman of Ping An of China, as the team leader. At the 2019 performance conference, Ma Mingzhe expounded the roadmap for life insurance reform for the first time. In the agent channel, he upgraded the past "healthy sea of people" to the pursuit of quality and agent income, and proposed to seek breakthroughs in the Internet insurance channel .
Ma Mingzhe pointed out: "We have discovered from the year before last that the life insurance market has undergone great changes, including the market, environment, and consumer demand. The income per person is nearly twice the market average, but from the perspective of the next three to five years, it is still not enough.”
From the perspective of agent income, in 2019, the per capita income of Ping An Life Insurance agents was 6,309 yuan per month, a slight increase year-on-year.
China Life's agency scale has grown against the trend
While the scale of some traditional life insurance companies has shrunk, the scale of China Life's agency growth has become a stark contrast. As of the end of 2019, the team size of China Life's individual insurance channel was 1.613 million, an increase of 12.1% from the end of 2018. After
increased and decreased, the gap between the two giants, China Life Insurance and Ping An Life Insurance, quickly widened by more than 410,000 agents. In 2018, the difference between the two companies’ agents was only 119,000.
From the perspective of new business value, in 2019, China Life achieved a one-year new business value of 58.698 billion yuan, an increase of 18.6% year-on-year; the one-year new business value rate of individual insurance channels was 45.3%, an increase of 3.2 percentage points year-on-year. Ping An Life achieved a one-year new business value of 75.945 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.1%; the new business value rate was 47.3%, a year-on-year increase of 3.6 percentage points. The new business value rate of the agency channel was 64.9%, a year-on-year increase of 7.8 percentage points.
Judging from other comparable indicators, the policy continuity ratios of the two major life insurance giants both declined in 2019. The 14-month and 26-month policy continuity rates of China Life Insurance decreased by 4.3 and 0.1 percentage points to 86.8% and 85.9% respectively; the 13-month and 25-month policy continuity rates of Ping An Life Insurance decreased by 3.6 and 1.1 percentage points to 87.8% , 87.1%.
The reporter of "Daily Economic News" also noticed that while the manpower of the agent channel increased, the number of sales agents of China Life's other channels showed a decline.
As of the end of 2019, China Life's bancassurance channel had 166,000 sales staff, a year-on-year decrease of 32%; group insurance sales staff had 65,500 staff, a year-on-year decrease of 21%. In addition, the Insurance Association of China recently disclosed the analysis report on the development situation of the life insurance telemarketing industry in 2019, stating that China Life has withdrawn from the telemarketing market in 2019. The number of
agents soared also Xinhua Insurance and PICC Life Insurance. In 2019, the number of new China Insurance sales agents reached 507,000, a year-on-year increase of 37%. The management said that it has achieved the development goal that has not been realized for many years. Human base.” As of December 31, 2019, PICC Life Insurance had 391,000 sales agents, a year-on-year increase of 59.2%.
From the perspective of new business value, New China Insurance realized a one-year new business value of 9.779 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 19.9%, and a new business value rate of 30.3%, a year-on-year decrease of 17.6 percentage points. PICC Life achieved a one-year new business value of 6.791 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8.8%.
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