When Insurance agents quit their jobs, they leave a dozen or so clients behind. Only a few take the extra step to properly turn over their clients to a new servicing agent, so most are left with a bad impression of the industry as a whole. The notion that the industry is just a “side gig” and insurance agents will most likely disappear after taking his commissions spreads like wildfire. Turnover rate is an important thing, especially in a service-based sales industry.
I have a lot of friends who are insurance agents and I asked them what are the most usual but overlooked reasons why insurance agents quit. These are their top 2 answers.
Culture Mismatch
There’s a fine line between inclusive and indiscriminate recruitment. The insurance industry is one of those industries that give equal opportunities to people regardless of their social and educational background. This leads to the practice of opening and offering the profession to anyone as long as they have the necessary documents and pass the Insurance Commission licensure exam.
However, inclusivity sometimes leads to indiscriminate recruitment where the regard for culture fit is thrown away for the sake of hitting the recruitment quota. We hear workplace culture mainly in the corporate setting but it applies equally, and even more, to the insurance industry. Any sales job requires discipline and resilience, and workplace culture plays a crucial role in the development of these two.
This is not about whether your team has a good culture or not. Culture is subjective. There will be people that will resonate with your team’s culture and there will be those that won’t. That is if you have a solidly established culture in the first place. It takes more resources (time, energy, and money) to recruit people and assimilate them into your team’s culture. The most efficient and effective way to ensure “culture match” is to have an established set of values, conduct, and habits. The only thing left to do is find people who are at least attracted to the same values, conduct, and habits.
Recruiting culturally unfit people is also detrimental to your team’s culture. Every single person that gets recruited has an effect on the team’s culture, and this can be positive or negative. Indiscriminately recruit enough people and the culture that you built will disappear.
Paperwork
“Action”
This word captures the essence of the industry from approaching a prospect, scheduling an appointment, presenting a product, and closing the sale. The job just keeps on going and going. This is what entices a lot of achievers to join the industry. Unlike an employee in a 9 to 5 job, an insurance agent doesn’t have to get tangled up with formal requests, memos, and bureaucracies. Or does he?
A lot of agents are not informed that they will have to deal with taxation and other compliance requirements—most of the time, on their own. It has also become a common practice to delay documents that should be submitted right when the insurance agent starts on the job. Then all of a sudden, in the middle of the year, the compliance department of the company sends an email to the insurance agent and his manager—it’s a long list of documents that needs to be submitted or else, that application for a new business he just sent can’t be approved. In most cases, the issue is resolved and the agent goes on with his activities. However, not everyone survives this situation.
Many insurance agents are part-timers. They’ve taken the job so they can utilize their extra 2 to 4 hours every day and earn additional income. I know of part-time agents who had no choice but to resign because they couldn’t submit the necessary documents for compliance with the limited time they had. This is painful to a lot of managers because being a full-time insurance agent guarantee success. There are part-timers who are very productive. They’re just saving up for an emergency fund so they can transition to becoming a full-time insurance agent. But paperwork has prevented a lot of success stories for part-timers in the industry.
Full-time insurance agents are also victims of paperwork. Every single insurance agent will tell you that they will be more productive if they focus on their activities and training. This is also why many successful ones, especially those who started managing a team, hire personal assistants or secretaries to help them with administrative tasks and compliance requirements. But truth be told, not everyone has the capacity to hire someone, at least in the early stages of their business, so they have to deal with the paperwork on their own. It’s not a secret that paperwork causes stress in any industry. In fact, humans have spent the last couple of decades automating as many administrative tasks as possible so workers can focus on their main job. However, if we look at the current state of the insurance industry in our country, we are lagging behind when it comes to paperwork, documentation, and compliance. This is one of the problems our company, XDT and Co., wants to solve.
Conclusion
Insurance agents don’t usually quit all of a sudden. They tell their most trusted colleagues or manager if they’re having issues with anything. At the least, they show signs. Culture mismatch and troublesome paperwork seem to have no connection, but they actually do. These are two of the few things that should already be established in a team even before recruitment begins. Good managers understand that they should eliminate as much friction as possible in the team so their agents can focus on their main task, which is selling, and perform at their best.
Culture match eliminates the friction of workplace drama and common office problems like gossiping, bullying, and discrimination. An established paperwork and compliance system eliminates the friction of bureaucracy and “paperwork fatigue”.
If you haven’t established these two in your team and you’re already managing people, don’t worry because it’s not too late. Like I said earlier, every single recruit will affect your culture. If you think your team’s culture is weakening, create a plan to recruit culture-strengthening people in your team from here on. If you have stress-inducing paperwork and compliance system, allow us to use our expertise to help you become the best manager that you can be.
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I’m Prof Xy, the preferred Tax Consultant of Filipino MSMEs and professionals. I help financial advisors, real estate agents, and business owners become tax compliant through educational webinars and content about tax, and providing tax services for their comfort and convenience.
We want insurance managers and agents to let us take care of their compliance requirements such as their taxes and registration. XDT and Company, Inc.
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