Fortune Life Insurance Co. Inc. (Fortune Life) will increase its sales force this year to 1,900 agents in a bid to widen its market reach in line with the company’s expansion plans.
During the Fortune Life Annual Awards 2018 held at the Citystate Tower Hotel in Manila on Wednesday night, the insurance firm’s management team celebrated the success of its sales agents who helped rake in first year premiums for 2017, amounting to P130 million.
“Right now, we have about 1,400 licensed agents. We are targeting to increase our personnel to 1,900 licensed agents nationwide [this year],” Fortune Life FVP Virgilio S. Aquino told the BusinessMirror.
This means additional new sales agents of around 500 in total spread nationwide.
Fortune Life President D. Arnold A. Cabangon said in his speech that a realignment of the company’s works will be done this year, pointing out that its sales force will be tapping the military and police markets for its insurance products.
“We need to adapt, we need to be open to change. Right now we are realigning our organization to effectively respond to the needs of the market, and also with our sales force. We need to diversify, we need to change our portfolio mix, as everyone knows most of our business is into DepEd [Department of Education] but I think we need to change that…in the coming months and years we will penetrate other markets,” Cabangon said.
Last year Fortune Life celebrated the seventh year of its Values Advocacy Program (VAP), together with the DepEd and Marylindbert International, promoting the values of hard work and discipline among Filipino teachers and students.
“We will penetrate the police and military markets. We will augment our group sales, so we will have a presence in the group market, namely, the LGU [local government unit], the thrift bank and the rural bank markets. In our 33 years of existence, Fortune Life has seen the best and the worst of times, the tasks ahead are daunting, but I am confident that we will see ourselves through with you as our partners,” he added.
Aquino said Fortune Life will enhance the training program for its sales agents, which will focus on selling insurance products to uniformed personnel, a market that is not usually tapped by insurance companies due to the risky nature of their job.
“We need to further train our agents to go into that market because it’s not simple going into that market, that’s specialized. Maybe we need to emphasize that there are other markets aside from the DepEd that they [the sales force] need to penetrate,” he said.
Fortune Life registered first-year premiums for 2017 amounting to P130 million, contracting by 18.2 percent from the first-year premiums registered in 2016 at P159 million. But the organization is hopeful that it can increase its first-year premiums this year by tapping other market niches.
“We ended around P130 million for first-year premiums [in 2017]. We are higher in 2016…we are targeting to increase it by 33 percent [in 2018],” he added.
Insurance Commissioner Dennis B. Funa, who was the guest of honor at the event, reassured attendees that the Insurance Commission (IC) will continue to do its part in strengthening the country’s insurance industry.
“The IC, as always, remains your humble partner in the industry’s journey toward our goals. Complementing your efforts, the Office has been conducting lectures about insurance among students and ordinary citizens; and I myself have explored the use of media through radio and print, in hopes that we be able to reach a wider group of people who might understand and realize how important insurance truly is,” Funa said.
Image credits: Roy Domingo