LEADING insurance provider Insular Life honored its top sales producers for 2015 on April 12 at the City of Dreams in Pasay City.
The annual event feted 101 awardees who attributed their success to finding meaning in their work.
The answers may strike one as obvious. For Insular Life’s financial consultant Nunnatus Cortez, his 28 years in business of advising people about managing finances and stowing away for the future all boils down to financial literacy is tantamount to a more secured future.
“There are several phases in life: the learning phase, the application phase and then retirement,” Cortez told the BusinessMirror. “If you do not have financial literacy, you will end up having nothing when you retire.”
By phases, Cortez meant living different stages in one’s life with the same lifestyle, unfettered by income resource or when finances are getting short.
He said talking people into insurance is one part letting them understand what an insurance policy will do to them and their families, and two parts putting people in his shoes.
“I tell people that I want to retire years from now comfortably, which means that I would still enjoy the same lifestyle I am enjoying in my prime years. It does not necessarily mean sacrificing life when you’re young, but instead, cutting it down just a little,” he said.
“By phases, I also mean, say, a breadwinner is unceremoniously taken out of the family picture. Even when he goes his financial obligation will continue,” Cortez said. “On our jobs lie the future of that breadwinner’s family by making sure that the inflow of finances is stable even when he’s gone.”
In insuring people, financial advisers don’t force square pegs into round holes. It’s a balancing act. “We’re like doctors: We don’t give meds until we have figured what you need,” said Pedy Arela, who was also one of the Insular’s winning financial advisers, adding that the insurance business is hinged on studying the market then developing a certain product tailor-fit for it.
“What we sell is basically protection,” added Marichu Alvarez, also one of the awardees. “We go out day after day to send a message about the importance of savings and investments toward the future uncertain, so that you may be prepared for whatever life throws your way.”