‘If you think a challenge is struggle, go do some 9 to 5 job.’ That is Mr K Ravi Kumar’s basic stand on his profession. The 40 year-old Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) agent based at Mumbai firmly believes there are no free lunches and nobody will give you money for not working!

What to choose, what to leave – that was our dilemma when
we decided to bring you select Role Models from four years
of Premium magazine. We hope you enjoy this trip down
memory lane!

He was in the armed forces, took up insurance agency without a clue about insurance and is riding high. Wing Commander Dinesh Kumar Bhardwaj based at Gurgaon represents the two Tata AIG insurance companies, flying the world as a high achiever in the new career he discovered in his late fifties and trying to din the importance of insurance protection into the heads of his erstwhile defence forces colleagues!

Mr Praful Shah is an quintessential old world father and son insurance agents of the type you find in Mumbai, serving fathers and sons and son’s sons with the confidence that they know what the client needs so well that the relationship grows from generation to generation. Because Mr Praful Shah’s father started in this profession, and his son is now successfully helping him.

Insurance in an Island Amid the lush green of the jungle, abright red Maruti Swift flashes by emblazoned with graphics advertising popular Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) schemes like ‘Bima Gold.’ On a holiday to the Andaman and Nicobar islands, I was in one of the white Tata Sumos, that was part of a [...]

Banker to Agent Why would a successful banker at the peak of his career give up a plum job in a bank and become an independent insurance agent? Says Mr G Srinivasan, Agent, Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India, Adyar Branch, Chennai, “I have always wanted to do things for others and not myself.” You [...]

Single Point of Contact, 24×7 Many children don’t want to get into their father’s line of business, but here is one exception. Mr Ashish Bhatia, Agent of The New India Assurance Company, at Mumbai claimed becoming an insurance agent as his right because, not only it was his father’s profession, but also his grandfather’s! “I [...]

“A Life Concept Not Commmodity” A woman of substance is how Ms Merlyn Kevin Fernandez, Agency Associate, Max New York Life Insurance (MNYL) Company Limited, can be best described. A top performing agent from Mumbai, Ms Merlyn comes across as a person with great clarity of thought. Her approach to the insurance profession is refreshing [...]

At the end of her first year, this ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company agent was called by her manager and told she had qualified for Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT). “What is MDRT?”she asked innocently!
Yet, the second year she qualified for Court of the Table (CoT) and subsequently, for five years, she has been qualifying for Top of the Table (ToT).

“Hard work and sincerity” has been his motto in the 26 years that he has been an agent. It was as young an age as 18 when Mr P N Joshi, who hails from the tiny state of Goa, took up a Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) agency.