Hot calling: Insure and be job-secure

MUMBAI: Tired of circulating gadzillion copies of your resume only to be met by a polite ‘no-thanks’? Fed up with calming irate customers on the phone in a Yankee accent all night long?
If the rat-race to join the back office to the world is distressing, check out another industry that is recruiting by the thousands—life insurance. Job growth in life insurance is close, if not equal, to that of call centres and BPO (business process outsourcing) outfits.
Industry estimates and those by IT research companies show that BPO (excluding inhouse operations) and private life insurance firms will each employ about two lakh people by March 31, 2004.
While most private insurance companies plan to increase their employee strengths this year by 50 per cent to 10,000 by this year-end, the number of life advisors or insurance agents—also employed directly by private firms—is expected to double to 1.8 lakhs, according to industry estimates. And these figures do not include people selling insurance through banks, corporate agents, brokers and those employed in insurance back-office jobs like technical support, says HDFC Standard Life Insurance marketing head Pankaj Seith.
The government-owned Life Insurance Corporation employs more than eight lakh agents across the country. Now for the moolah. According to IT research firm Gartner India’s country head Sujay Chohan, agents at call centres typically pick up between Rs 8,000 to 12,000 per month while supervisors take home between Rs 20,000 to 45,000 per month. Of course, the cost to the company is much higher on account of sizeable training costs.
Private life insurer OM Kotak Mahindra’s director Shivaji Dam says that entrylevel sales managers in insurance draw between Rs 2 to 5 lakhs per annum along with commissions that could go up to 100 per cent of the salary. While life advisors get a variable remuneration depending on how many policies they sell,Mr Dam says that most of his consistent performers draw at least Rs 10,000 per month while the top dogs get even more than Rs 1 lakh per month as commissions.