Most Required Qualities of an Insurance Agent

Most Required Qualities of an Insurance Agent

Article by Sherin Dev; Join me in Twitter / Facebook

Being an insurance advisor is not a big task. Each Business Development Manager has target to appoint number of advisors under him. If you want to be one, you can approach him directly. But, after being an advisor, not take this profession as a license to cheat people for selfish gains. Customers should be aware to identify the required qualities of a good insurance advisor to avoid traps. Below are some good qualities a perfect advisor should have.

1. Honesty - Honesty is the most important quality among others. An advisor should be able to present the advantages and disadvantages of a product that he is selling. He should make the customer aware about the profit and possible impacts of the product for short term and long term. The naked truth is, most of the advisors are just being an advisor with only motive to get commission and they will use every possible and ugly method to trap the customer. In a plain word, it is known as “cheating”

2. Knowledge – An advisor should have very good knowledge about the product he is selling as well as the products available in the market in it kind. He should be able to undertake comparative study between various products from other companies falling under the same category. This knowledge leads him to identify features of each available product as well as enable him to give proper advice to customers to select a better one.

3. Passion – An insurance advisor should be passionate to his profession. As I said in the previous session, passion to the profession is a must to build honesty to job. Nobody in this world can reach to success with any field were to he doesn’t have any passion. This quality enables one to dig maximum into a product to identify the qualities and errors.

4. Business Ethics – It is a requirement to being an Insurance agent; he should read, study and pass the qualifying exam. In his manual, business ethics has a major session to learn. By the sake of god, not many people sticking into business ethics. If an advisor has business ethics, he will never hide the disadvantages of a product from customer to whom he meet. An advisor, who doesn’t have any ethics, will use all possible methods to polish the product disadvantages to sell the same for his personal gains.

5. Customer focused – This is one of the most required qualities to an Insurance Advisor. He should be able to understand the customer requirements well to advise him a proper product. If an advisor is not able to do so, better he goes and looks another profession where he can perform well. That is better than getting curse in the future.

6. Financial Planning Skills – A good insurance advisor should have good financial planning skills. Without same, he is just like any ordinary person, will not be able to identify the exact requirements of a customer to advise correct product for him. A must have requirement of an advisor; he/she should be a good financial planner. Through this quality, he can plan finance for a customer and can lead him to correct products.

7. Multi product awareness – A good Insurance advisor should have very good understanding about the products that he has in his basket as well as other necessary products that required building a better portfolio for customer. Insurance is not only the product one can use to build a financial portfolio. There are various products required to balance the financial portfolio of the customer. With less knowledge about any product other than what he is selling, I can’t say he is a good Insurance Advisor. But, he is a dumb advisor and customer should avoid such beasts.

8. Follow up skills – Selling an insurance product doesn’t fulfill the job of an Advisor. He should keep track of each customer and should be able to advise him time to time to leverage maximum benefits from his investments. He should keep all the required information’s about the customer and the product that he bought through him. This information will be useful to track the changes in the future as well as contact the customer if there is any action required by him.

9. Self update – an advisor should spend enough time to update his product skills as well as other products were he should have enough skills when dealing with customers. He should be aware about the market changes and innovations happening in his area of service as well as the features of new products that launching in the market.

And finally, he should be a good listener with required people management skills.

There are various qualities also required by an advisor. This can be personal qualities, good character etc. But, above mentioned are the must have qualities for an advisor. Customer can immediately identify and measure and advisor if using some common sense. If found a wrong guy, they should avoid him at any cost.

Hope this article will be helpful to all those planning to meet insurance advisor as well as the people who is already an advisor.


 


Insurance: A Guide

"Remember kids, I have life insurance" - Adam Savage

This is a guest article from Tatyana Levin

These days one must be financially savvy. Money is not easy to come by and should be managed carefully. With the availability of tools that make it easy to keep track of current events, the stock market, and even your own money, it would be almost a crime to not utilize these tools to make the best and most informed financial decisions. Unfortunately, the more there is, the more there is to keep track of. This applies both to tracking tools and money (the small curse within the comfort of having money to keep track of).

 The savvier ones of us dabble in investments, and the savviest make their living that way. The key is that they know what to invest in. Not magically, of course; investors do a significant amount of research to learn how to optimize their portfolios, but they have the understanding.

A grossly overlooked investment is insurance. This may be because is not typically referred to as an investment with the exception of whole life insurance that has a specific investment component within it. Webster’s defines the word “invest” as a commitment of money for a return and “insurance” as a guarantee. This makes insurance the safest type of investment, because your returns are guaranteed.  But returns are not always financial in the case of insurance. They can be, if there is an unforeseen accident, but the most certain return is the feeling of security.

Now there are many different types of insurance, and what you need depends on your current situation. Obviously you only need auto insurance, found using auto insurance leads if you have a car, and you only need renter’s insurance if you rent and have possessions that you would need insured. Insurance is for those who have something to lose. With an attachment to something, either emotional of physical (or dependence, not like physically being glued to your car), comes the fear that it will be damaged or ruined in some way. For example, if your house caught on fire, you would be devastated. What would add insult to injury is not having a way to recover from this horrible disaster.

 These types of examples are not unique to this article. That is the way that insurance is sold. As they say that clichés are clichés for a reason, insurance is promoted this way for a reason.  The foundation of the concept of insurance is uncertainty, and it is the same uncertainty that is conjured up when investing.

The main difference between insurance and investment is that not having insurance creates a feeling of uncertainty while investments by nature are uncertain. Therefore, investing in insurance creates security and is the only secure investment that exists (and is legal). Getting insurance should be one of the easier financial tasks if you apply all the resources available with technological advances like smart phones.

About the Author: This article was written by Tatyana Levin, a copywriter for InsuranceFiles.com