As domestic listed insurance companies have successively released their 2023 annual reports, more industry details have also been revealed. Among them, the size of agents has always been one of the core data of concern within the industry, because at present, in the mainland insurance industry, especially in the life insurance industry, the individual insurance channel is still the "main force of premiums" of most insurance companies, and the size and quality of the agent team will be directly related to the output of premiums.
Judging from the latest data, the scale of the insurance agent team has basically stabilized, such as China Life, which currently ranks first in the industry in terms of agent size, only 5.09% of the number of agents last year, far lower than the double-digit decline in the past few years, and companies like Ping An, although the decline in agent size exceeded 20%, the decline mainly occurred in the first half of 2023, and the decline in the second half of the year was relatively limited. Therefore, we can basically give a prediction here, and the scale of agents in the industry is indeed going to stabilize.
In fact, in the past few years, the insurance company's internal team has also seen a considerable decline in scale, ushering in a wave of "resignation" that has lasted for a long time, which to a certain extent reflects the characteristics of the industry contraction.
As the "manager, supporter, and service provider" of the field team, the size and development of the office team also have a profound impact on the insurance industry.
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Ping An ranks first in the industry in terms of the number and proportion of employees declining
In terms of absolute number, among the currently listed insurance companies in China, the largest number of employees is Chinese Insurance Company, with 175,800 employees in 2023; Ping An of China ranks second with 151,500 employees; Chinese Life, China Pacific Insurance and Xinhua Insurance rank third, fourth and fifth respectively, with 100,000, 98,700 and 30,700 respectively.
From the data, it is not difficult to see that the number of employees of these listed insurance companies has seen a significant and continuous decline. Among them, Ping An is the fastest-declining insurance company, with the number of employees falling from 189,300 in 2021 to 151,500 currently, with a compound annual growth rate of -10.6%, which means that the number of employees in each of Ping An's two years will be discounted by 9% on the basis of the previous year. In 2021, Ping An was the insurance company with the largest number of employees in China.
Under the influence of a high base and a high rate of decline, Ping An has also become the company with the largest absolute decline in the number of employees, with a decrease of nearly 38,000 employees in the past two years.
In the past two years, the smallest decline in the size of employees is Chinese Life, under the higher staff size, the number of employees in China Life has decreased by 3,262 in two years, with a compound annual growth rate of -1.6%. In addition, the compound annual growth rate of employees of PICC, CPIC and Xinhua Insurance was -2.3%, -4.1% and -5.7% respectively.
Why is Ping An the company with the largest decline in absolute terms? We believe that in addition to the factors of industry contraction, it is also related to Ping An's corporate ownership. For example, insurance companies such as PICC and China Life Insurance are state-controlled financial groups, and the mobility of employees will be relatively small, while Ping An, as a private insurance group, will have relatively large employee mobility.
In terms of the change in the number of employees in specific positions, take PICC as an example. In the past two years, PICC's managerial staff, marketing and sales personnel have experienced a continuous decline, while professional and technical personnel have experienced a continuous increase.
This also shows that in the past few years, when the liability side of the industry was relatively sluggish, insurance companies still made some contractions on the sales side, including some personnel reductions in the upper and lower links of the sales side, but on the technical side, PICC still spared no effort to develop insurance technology, in which the number of professional and technical personnel has achieved continuous growth. This also reflects that domestic insurance companies still attach great importance to the business of insurance technology.
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Old employees are facing "being dismissed", and new employees can't be retained.
What happened to the insurance company's employee system?
On social platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Maimai, we have also seen a lot of resignations from the insurance industry in the past two years.
Image source: Xiaohongshu
Judging from the content of this dynamic, the employee previously worked in a central state-owned enterprise insurance company, worked in the insurance industry for more than ten years, and also served in many positions, but he was still "optimized" at the age of 35+.
Image source: Xiaohongshu
This dynamic reflects the current situation of the fresh graduate in the insurance industry, and the fresh graduate chose to leave the company only one and a half months after serving in the central enterprise insurance office.
These two dynamics actually reflect the current state of two types of employees in the insurance industry, that is, employees who have been in the industry for a long time are facing the possibility of being "optimized", while fresh graduates are unwilling to stay in the industry, and the insurance industry cannot retain these young blood.
The main reason for the former "being optimized" is that the industry is indeed in a relatively difficult period of time in the past two years, and the rapid decline in the size of the agent team means that the insurance company's internal team may be redundant.
At the same time, with the SASAC's assessment of the performance of central enterprises becoming more and more stringent, the pressure on the performance of follow-up insurance companies will also increase.
The inability to retain young people is another problem facing the insurance industry at present. According to the 2023 College Graduate Employment Trends released in July last year, the relationship between companies and the younger generation is more challenging than ever for the new generation of young people who tend to prefer more meaningful work, flexible work environments and more personalized career development. As a more traditional financial enterprise, insurance companies have a more rigorous internal working environment and strict definitions of different ranks, so the appeal of such a working environment to young people is indeed limited. In addition, with the increasing degree of intelligence in some manufacturing enterprises, young people are also willing to "enter the factory" and have the opportunity to become high-tech talents.
In addition, a large part of the reason why the insurance industry cannot retain young people is that there is a large gap between the salaries of domestic insurance companies and the securities and banking industries. According to statistics, Ping An had the highest per capita salary of employees in domestic listed insurance companies last year, reaching 299,900 yuan, and the overall income range was in the range of 20-300,000 yuan.
Let's take the brokerage industry as an example, the average salary of employees of CITIC Securities, the "first brother" of domestic brokerages, was 797,300 yuan last year, while that of CICC and Shenwan Hongyuan reached 697,200 yuan and 654,500 yuan. Although we should also realize that the insurance industry and the securities industry are naturally very different, business models and profit methods are very different, but even if these factors are considered, the gap in salary is still obvious, so some high-level talents and young people in the early stage of their careers if they consider more salary factors, then the insurance industry will naturally not become their first choice.
So although we have often mentioned in the past that the insurance agent team needs more fresh blood, more young people, and more high-quality talents. But now it seems that the insurance office team is not the same?
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The demand for technology-based talents has increased greatly, and the insurance company needs to show greater sincerity
On the whole, the demand for high-level talents in the domestic insurance industry is huge, and the gap is also very large. When talking about the lack of high-level talents in the insurance industry, Peterson, managing director of the international department of the Society of Actuaries of North America, said in an interview with Yicai in 2023: "In China's insurance industry, there are enough ordinary operation and sales talents. However, there is a large shortage of high-quality, high-tech talents such as actuaries and actuariaries. Taking actuaries as an example, there are only about 2000~3000 actuaries in China, and about 1400 actuaries certified by the North American Society of Actuaries, corresponding to China's 1.4 billion population, there is still a huge demand space. He estimates that China needs at least tens of thousands of actuaries compared to the 25,000 actuaries in the United States who serve a population of more than 300 million.
However, by observing the changes in the industry, we still see some positive points. For example, in the past two years, the industry has been increasing the recruitment of scientific and technological talents, and is willing to give higher salaries.
According to the China Securities Journal, since the beginning of this year, major insurance companies have focused on the recruitment of financial technology and health management talents, especially the "science and technology talent fever" is still continuing, and some insurance companies have even opened up fast tracks or special sessions for the recruitment of science and technology positions.
For example, Ping An's Internet technology positions cover artificial intelligence, big data, information security, front-end and back-end, operation and maintenance testing, product operation, etc., while Taikang Insurance's information technology positions cover R&D engineers, algorithm engineers, technology development engineers, data development and analysis, information security, network management, etc.
In addition, the regulator is constantly encouraging the industry to vigorously promote the development of science and technology. For example, according to the insurance technology development plan during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period of the China Insurance Association, during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, in terms of investment in science and technology, it is necessary to promote the industry to achieve the goal of more than 1% of information technology investment and more than 5% of information technology personnel, and in terms of innovative applications, it is proposed to promote the cumulative number of patent applications in the industry to exceed 20,000. At the same time, the plan encourages insurers of different sizes to set differentiated development goals.
The advent of the AI era has also increased the demand for technology-based talents in the insurance industry, such as the number of employees of China Life's "other professional and technical personnel" and PICC's "professional and technical personnel" has achieved continuous growth. We expect that the proportion of professional and technical personnel in major insurance companies will continue to increase in the future.
In the future, in addition to improving the treatment of employees, insurance companies should also increase support for technical talents and build a corporate culture suitable for the characteristics of workers in the new era, so as to attract more young people and technical talents and support the future development of the insurance industry!