It happened in 1978. Interviews to the post of Development Officer (DO) in United India Insurance Company (UIIC) were being held and the interview panel made up of top officials from the four public sector General insurance companies and General Insurance Corporation of India (GIC) and headed by an Assistant General Manager.
One young man in Calcutta was asked a simple question: You want to join as a DO, what do you ultimately want to become? ‘Chairman’, came the answer.
There were no more questions. After a long pin-drop silence, the candidate was asked to leave the room.

A brand new year has begun, and it is fresh with hope and challenges.
During the year 2010 the fear of the downturn and loss of earnings has been destroyed and there is a feeling of new hope says K Nitya Kalyani.

The last ten years have thrown a series of challenges at the Indian insurance agent who feared that competition would kill his livelihood. Nothing like that happened. Yet, change is very fast paced even today, and K Nitya Kalyani brings you the first part of a new series on Business Strategy to thrive in a new era of competition and challenges.

A delayed train changed the course of Mr P M Padmanabhan’s career. This 72 year old Life Insurance Corporation of India Agent at Vellore, Tamil Nadu gave up thoughts of giving up his agency and went on to become a long standing member of the Chairman’s Club.

A festival is celebrated to mark an occasion like Narakasura’s destruction at the hands of Lord Krishna. Or, to mark the change of a season, like Makar Sankranti or New Year. Change is celebrated. Even destruction is celebrated since it gives way to creation in its place!
Insurance agents in India are familiar with change. They have been watching the old systems disintegrating and being replaced with new systems.

Spending a long weekend at breathtaking Kovalam beach in Tiruvananthapuram in the beautiful Hotel Leela, about 500 insurance agents were thinking of…… how to master the changes in their profession and stay successful!
That’s what happened at Life Underwriters Guild of India’s (LUGI) 8th Annual Convention at Tiruvananthapuram in the last week of September.

The view that marketing or selling is misrepresentation is a widespread one. It is a burden that the profession has to bear and its members have to overcome before they meet with success.
However, the customer has rights. The law has to guarantee and protect them. And the Government has to help uphold them.
In fact, only if this entire system works to the satisfaction of the customer will it be sustainable. And only then can the seller, sell, says K Nitya Kalyani in this instalment of the Sales Skills series.

All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts. That is the sum total of what this hugely popular book by James Allen conveys. We have read often that thought has power and hence the importance of positive thinking. This is the book that pioneered that concept, explaining that there is a direct connection between our thoughts and what happens to us in our lives, not only in terms of how we shape ourselves up but also how our circumstances shape up!
The third self-help book we take up in this series is an age-old classic written in the language of the early 20th century. It is not a book, but just an essay, and its title is from the bible, from the Book of Proverbs chapter 23 verse 7, that says “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
And that is the core of this essay: ‘Assume responsibility for your self and your life, and achievement will be yours.’

Stricter norms for Unit-Linked insurance policies (ULIPs) started this September 1, 2010. In the last few months, ULIPs have been in the news constantly due to the SEBI-IRDA fight over who should regulate it and also due to accusations of widespread mis-selling. Four years ago around this time too it was very much in the [...]

Many critical outcomes depend on successful and sustained insurance selling. From financial security of a society to investments for business and for public infrastructure, they all depend on the ‘yes’ that some insurance agent, somewhere in the country, manages to get from his customer after much effort. What does this success depend on asks K Nitya Kalyani.