The US-based MetLife has developed and empowered a network of more than 45,000 skilled workers in the insurance sector in the last two decades. MetLife is a branch of MetLife, Inc. operating in Nepal since December 2001. To support the growing needs of Nepal, it has launched the ‘Agency of the Future’, a programme which provides training and digital tools for people aspiring to become a better agent. In a brief interview with the Post, Young Ho Han, vice president, and head of Asia Distribution, at Metlife Asia talked about the market competition, a career as an insurance agent, and the use of technology in the insurance sector. Excerpts:

In this competitive market, what makes MetLife stand out as an attractive choice for individuals considering a career as an insurance agent?

Our professionalism makes us different from other competitors. We are trying to make our agents more professional compared with other regular agents. We have a 156-year history of running as an agency. This shows that we have many years of experience. We are developing and deploying those years of experience in the market. By doing that, as an agent, we have well-defined training programmes and they know how to address customers' needs and deliver customer services better. We have the most advanced digital technology to support agent activity and satisfy customer needs.

How will MetLife’s ‘Agency of the Future’ initiative change the landscape of a career as an insurance agent?

Our ‘Agency of the Future’ model, as mentioned earlier, is professionalism. What we mean by professionalism is that we provide proper compensation, career opportunities, and recognition. This is a complete job from an agent's perspective. So, with a job, an agent should be able to earn good money based on their performance and at the same time they should have good career aspirations to grow within the organisation. So, we are trying to make this thing complete through the design. And lastly, we want them to feel the power of the organisation and to feel recognised for doing their jobs. These are the areas we are focusing on and this can differentiate us from the other’s existing models.

How does the company support new agents in building a successful career path?

There are many things we can do to support our agents. First, we need to make them prepared. So, we don’t send our agent people into the field without any preparations. We help them to be prepared 100 percent. We give them the right mindset of the agent’s spirit and we also provide the right technology so that they can deliver better services to the customer. Second, when they do their business, and build their performance, we systematically design career opportunities so that they can move up in the hierarchy step-by-step which makes them feel that they are growing in terms of status.

How has technology been integrated into the agency model? What role does it play in shaping the future of insurance agent careers at MetLife?

Regarding technology, we try to cover every part of the agent’s sales process. So, from the moment they join our company recruiting, we digitise the recruiting process with no analogue process. From the moment they join the company, we provide new prospective customer leads to the agent through the digital system so that they can do sales activity for the new customers. Next is the submission application fulfilment system, we normally call names by ‘kite’—-Keep In Touch Ever. In this programme, when our agency does product analysis for the customer at the time of submitting applications, everything is digitised. So, the customer does not need to do any paperwork and it goes to the system directly. This enables agents and customers to experience much more efficiently. Lastly, we have an online training platform which gives access to 24 hours so that they constantly update their knowledge and experience. This is our digital ecosystem in digital technology for our agents.

What aspects of MetLife’s agency model are uniquely tailored to meet the needs of the Nepali market?

We are developing as professional agents. The core of a professional agency is they can instantly tailor their services to meet customer needs. We developed a professional agent for our internal well-defined training system. During the curriculum and management process, they develop flexibility in handling different customer needs based on the situation. The agents themselves are the core of this model and quickly adapt their style depending on the customer.