‘Market share of Life Insurance has not adequately increased’

With the increase of per capita income in the country the market share of Life Insurance should increase, however that has not happened now, said Insurance Board of Sri Lanka (IBSL) Chairperson Indarni Sugathadasa.

Collective effort thus has to be taken by all insurance companies to take stocks to ascertain positive solutions to reach 87 percent of people in the country who are not insured at present,” she said.

Sugathadasa said that means of communication has reached great heights in the world thus the insurance fraternity should make use of it to educate potential customers.

“Life insurance sales personnel must open new vistas in the ocean of Life Insurance.

You must develop sales skills and life skills.

The segment of ageing population is increasing in the country and so is the rate of natural disasters. You can convince offspring of these elderly people to buy Life Insurances for their parents,” she said.

“Your approach should be “Demand Driven” and not “Supply Driven”.

Subsequent to selling the policies, products you must maintain a cordial relationship with your customers. Hence you must virtually become a family member of your customer by selling a Life insurance product without vanishing into thin air”, IBSL Chairperson she said.

Keynote speaker PIM Director Prof Ajantha Dharmasiri said, “We learn from the womb to the tomb and insurance agents must learn to comprehend their customers’ expectations. “Only permanent thing in the whole world is, ‘change’ thus be flexible and stick to basics to understand your customer’s whims and fancies”, he said.

SLIC Chairman Hemaka Amarasuriya said a thorough ‘Need Analysis’ of the potential customer should be done prior to selling him a product in order to sustain quality of the Life Insurance products sold