KUALA LUMPUR: The Life Insurance Association of Malaysia (LIAM) has called upon former life insurance agents who have received an e-mail to participate in the ‘Study on Turnover of Agents’ to respond to the survey questions by Feb 15, 2022.

       Chief executive officer Mark O’Dell said the feedback from the former agents would enable LIAM to better understand and validate the reasons behind their departure.

       "The survey is running from Jan 24 to Feb 15, 2022, and it is also offering incentives to lucky participants.

       "For the online survey, 20 lucky participants stand a chance to win RM100 Touch ‘n Go eWallet credits, and for the telephone interview, 100 lucky participants have a chance to win RM50 Touch ‘n Go eWallet credits,” he said in a statement today.

       LIAM has commissioned Inspire Group Asia to conduct the study, which consists of an online

       survey involving 5,000 respondents, 250 telephone interviews and focus group sessions.

       The study is part of the industry’s ongoing efforts to raise the standard of its agency workforce.

       It also aims to find out the reasons for agents leaving the profession, the relationship between product knowledge and the retention of agents, and to establish whether demographics, working experience, support at work and training and development influence the agents’ retention.

       O’Dell said the industry is also proactively looking at ways to recruit more full-time agents, developing best practices for agency development, reviewing current Continuing Professional Development programmes to identify gaps and set new benchmarks as well as developing competency of agents through certification/ accreditation programmes.

       "To further enhance the productivity of the industry, we are working with key stakeholders like

       Bank Negara Malaysia, Malaysian Insurance Institute, Malaysian Financial Planning Council and National Association of Malaysian Life Insurance and Family Takaful Advisors to review the programmes for the development and up-skilling of agents,” he said.

       According to LIAM, in 2021, the number of agents recruited by the industry increased to 88,068 agents from 82,042 agents in 2020. - Bernama