Text丨Pingxiang ed.丨Half-combed
Like most of the current fields, the transformation to high-quality development is also an important mission and topic faced by the insurance industry in this era, especially in the life insurance industry, which is at the core of this transformation.
However, it should also be noted that to this day, it is still difficult for most people to accurately describe what is a high-quality development of life insurance, and more is still tinkering and improving traditional methods.
Indeed, the concept of changing from the once rough industry model to a business model with higher quality, higher value and higher degree of professionalism is well known to the industry, but this is obviously an extremely comprehensive and complex system and ability, in which the standards of each link should be? and how will it be connected and linked, cooperate and interact? For the industry, it will be a subject that needs to be continuously explored, and the objects that can be referred to and used for reference are also very rare.
This also indicates the difficulties and great courage of the pioneers. After all, this is a road that no one has walked, and it is destined to be full of thorns, but once it comes out, it also means that a bright future is opened.
During this period, Ping An Life Insurance, a life insurance giant with a strong sense of crisis and innovative spirit, was the earliest and most resolute company of domestic life insurance companies in this major transformation of the industry, and also encountered a series of pains and doubts from the outside world, but it was also the first to see the results, explore the transformation methodology, and get high-quality future tickets.
During this period, the industry paid the most attention to how Ping An would forge the strongest marketing team - the agent team, which is the foundation of Ping An Life Insurance and even one of the foundations of Ping An Group.
Now, with the comprehensive promotion of Ping An's "three good and five-star" evaluation system to comprehensively improve the ability, behavior, quality, performance, and professional identity of the agent team, and the continuous rebound of its individual insurance business data, a number of indicators closely related to the quality and efficiency of agent operation have increased significantly, which means that Ping An Life has found its own "new quality productivity".
What is "new quality productivity" - innovation plays a leading role, getting rid of the traditional economic growth mode and productivity development path, with high-tech, high-efficiency, high-quality characteristics, in line with the new development concept of advanced productivity quality. This is the future direction of a major country given by the highest level as the mainland's social and economic development enters a new historical period, and it is a national policy. Under this trend, all walks of life are striving to introduce elements of new quality productivity, promote the industry to improve production efficiency, and transform and upgrade to high-quality development.
From the perspective of the entire industry, in fact, the vast majority of life insurance entities have realized the contradiction between the current status of productivity and the requirements of high-quality development, and it is also a new consensus of the life insurance industry to build advanced productivity that is more in line with the trend of the times. However, in order to completely jump out of the inertia and framework of traditional management, it is obvious that the overall concept and system standards need to be comprehensively reshaped.
If we compare the "three good and five-star" system with the agent operation mode in the traditional era, it can be seen that the productivity of life insurance mainly lies in the sales staff, and the "three good and five-star" system focuses on the qualitative optimization and evolution of the sales staff and the key productivity of the industry.
More importantly, the proposal and establishment of the concept of "new quality productivity" also provides further theoretical support and guidance for the transformation of Ping An Life, so that it can be more firm and deeper on the road of transformation.
On April 18, at the 28th Summit of Ping An Life, the name of "Personal Account Manager and Summit Hero Club", which has been used for many years, was officially upgraded to "Three Good and Five-Star Summit". Ma Mingzhe, chairman of Ping An of China, directly pointed out this logic:
"The goal of the 'three good and five-star' system is to cultivate new quality productivity in the life insurance industry in the new era, and new quality productivity requires a large number of new quality talents, and new quality talents come from one new quality team after another. ”
This also means that this upgrade is not only a name change, but also a symbol that Ping An Life's understanding of the high-quality development of life insurance, life insurance productivity and production relations has entered a new stage. From individuals to teams to systems, a new round of "unity of knowledge and action" of Ping An Life has begun, and the cultivation of "new quality productivity" of life insurance has been accelerated.
Lenovo Ping An's leadership and promotion of the industry after every self-reform in the past few years, and the vigorous reform of the domestic life insurance industry, once a leading enterprise really comes out, it is destined that the industry will accelerate through the deep water area and move towards high-quality development in a more sonorous way.
1 What kind of new quality productivity does the "Three Good and Five Stars" interpret in the end? It is not only the new connotation of the agent's profession, but also the ticket to the future of life insurance
The development and change of the times, the continuous change of the external economic environment, now it is needless to say, almost everyone has a deeper understanding of the changes in this industry that have not been seen in decades:
The acceleration of the aging of the population structure, the rise of the main consumer force in the insurance market, and the entry of interest rates into a downward cycle and other multiple factors are superimposing, all of which have gradually lost the soil on which the old model once promoted the rapid development of the industry.
When the manpower of nearly 10 million is still fresh in people's memory, the entire industry has been unable to stop the downward trend.
According to statistics, the sales force of life insurance has dropped to about 2.9 million in 2023, and it is obviously becoming more and more difficult for the old manpower market and organizational development mode to support the productivity development requirements of life insurance in this era.
The new quality productive forces are characterized by innovation, the key lies in high quality, and the essence is advanced productive forces. Ping An Life also recognizes that the reform of life insurance requires the continuous improvement of productivity, and the current improvement of life insurance productivity naturally requires a comprehensive innovation of the talent team from individual to ability, from form to connotation. And the most important driving force is of course continuous innovation.
Innovation comes not only from the development of science and technology and the enrichment of application scenarios, but also from the optimization of resource allocation and the development and change of ideas. This kind of innovation itself is also the distinctive gene of Ping An to continue to lead the industry and lead the industry.
In fact, an important support for the reform of Ping An Life's agents is Ping An's long-term exploration of scientific and technological construction and application, and behind the establishment of the "three-good five-star" system, it is also a more efficient channel operation model gradually formed by Ping An Life's exploration of digital finance over the years, the extensive application and empowerment of digital business processes, such as business development, management, and staff increase.
Also based on the continuous innovation of organizational development in the new era, Ping An has taken the lead in the industry to set off a comprehensive transformation of agent performance optimization and elitism, from "excellent +" to "MVP", and then to various agent reform projects, focusing on the formation, training and optimization of new teams, which also show new qualitative characteristics such as higher technical level, better quality, higher efficiency and more sustainability, which is in obvious contrast with traditional teams.
Of course, life insurance reform itself involves many aspects, and it is not just the evolution of agents themselves that can be accomplished.
Relying on Ping An's own resource layout in comprehensive finance, medical and health care for the elderly, Ping An Life has creatively created a distinctive "insurance + service" business model, which is not only highly connected with the current national strategy and market demand, but also further breaks the upper limit of traditional agents, extends and enriches the connotation of individual insurance and even the entire insurance business.
More importantly, this kind of innovation in the model will eventually change the cognition and concept of agent management, build a new and more professional professional self-discipline and identity, and become an important foundation for the formation of the "three good and five-star" system.
This system focuses on "good performance, good quality, and good behavior", and establishes a set of business evaluation standards covering multiple indicators, and makes star ratings for marketing organizations such as sales departments through scores from multiple dimensions such as operation, management, and quality, forming an evaluation method that is different from the previous simple "performance-only theory", and also makes high-quality development gradually have rules to follow and standards to follow.
2 The new quality team is emerging: a series of hard-core performance supports the transformation efficiency, and the data of the substantial improvement of the total factor productivity of life insurance has explained everything
Ping An, which has been established for more than 30 years, is an old qualification in the mainland insurance market since the resumption of business, and the summit, which has been held for 28 sessions, is not only an honorary commendation and achievement display of Ping An Life's top agents, but also a vane for the future development of Ping An and even the life insurance industry to a large extent.
As Ma Mingzhe said in his speech, "We commend heroic individuals, and we praise heroic collectives." Under the framework of the "three good and five stars" standard, Ping An's new quality team was formed, which became the focus of the summit.
Yang Zheng, Chairman of Ping An Life, said at the summit:
"There are 100 peak personnel who have been shortlisted for their excellent team performance. The team managed by these 100 team leaders will have a total premium of 19.26 billion yuan in 2023, and the production capacity is excellent. ”
They not only represent the ceiling level of Ping An and even the entire industry in terms of performance, but also present a situation of multiple characteristics and diversified development methods: there are teams with comprehensive leadership in production capacity and income, some have excellent human resources and the best system, and there are also teams with excellent quality and a continuation rate of close to 100%, as well as teams with a high proportion of high-performing marketing personnel under the new basic marketing law.
This also fully reflects that under the "three good and five-star" system, the rich dimensions and multiple explorations of team management "high quality, high performance and high quality" are constantly being excavated and valued, and the characteristics and specialties of different teams are fully expanded in the context of the current market demand in breadth and depth, and the operation of the "three high" team has also begun to release obvious business results.
In fact, since the start of this round of industry reform, creating a flat structure and improving the proportion of high-performing agents and high-performing agents have always been recognized by the industry as the direction of exploration and development.
In this process, Ping An has gradually realized that the team-based management and organizational growth of the marketing team are not in conflict with the expansion of performance, and can also help the cultivation and promotion of performance, as well as the continuous replication in the organization, which is still important in today's transformation stage, and the high-productivity and high-quality elite team is even the key to the excellence of manpower and production capacity.
This is also a clear embodiment of Ping An Life's exploration of agent reform, keeping pace with the times and seeking truth from facts.
Under the "three good and five-star" system, the concept of "good behavior supports good quality, good quality drives good performance" has also become a "dashboard" for the high-quality development of the overall business.
After all, healthy and sustainable growth is the goal of high-quality development and the true embodiment of "good performance".
The new quality team formed under the system is not only the top teams in the summit, but also the performance, efficiency and vitality of the entire Ping An Life insurance system.
In 2023 alone, Ping An Life's various team operating indicators have increased significantly, with a year-on-year increase of nearly 4% in per capita income, a year-on-year increase of about 9% in per capita new business value, and a year-on-year increase of 2.5 percentage points in the continuation rate of quality indicators in 13 and 6.8 percentage points year-on-year in 25 months.
According to the official definition, the new quality productivity is "marked by a substantial increase in total factor productivity", and the obvious growth of Ping An Life's team capacity, quality and other indicators is also allowing people to see that this new advanced productivity of life insurance is being formed.
3 To create a new standard for global life insurance marketing, Ping An's endless life insurance practice has just begun
Although it started early and continues to maintain its industry-leading market position and influence, in today's accelerated evolution of the external environment and social economy, and the continuous and deep cross-cycle transformation of industry reform, its own new quality productivity of the industry is far from reaching the point of maturity.
There are still more than 300,000 marketing teams, and there is still room for further removal of fake and refined, and there is still a lot of room for excavation in the proportion of high-performance teams. After all, only continuous recruitment and increase can inject vitality into the development of the team, so that the marketing team can replicate high-quality and high-capacity agents and teams on a large scale in the continuous movement and flow, and become a new qualitative driving force for a new round of development and growth.
Of course, the "three good and five-star" system will also keep pace with the times, the market and the reform and transformation of Ping An's agent team, and more efficiently cultivate a new quality team and agents that represent the advanced productivity of life insurance.
Starting from 2024, Ping An Life has significantly optimized the indicators of the evaluation system, making the entire system more concise, scientific, clear and focused, and further guiding the balanced and sustainable development of various teams. At the same time, the "short board principle" drives the whole team to face up to the improvement and reinforcement of the short board, and creates a more comprehensive and balanced development and growth situation for the new quality team.
In fact, Ping An itself is already an insurance company with international influence, and its clear strategy of "integrated finance + medical pension" is likened by the industry to an upgraded version of "Wells Fargo + United Health", which has built certain competitive advantages in terms of business model, customer scale, channel network, technology and brand.
In 2023, Ping An ranked first in the world in terms of total patent filings in both fintech and healthcare industries. At the same time, Ping An also ranked first in Brand Finance's "World's Most Valuable Insurance Brand" and ranked 16th in Forbes' Global 2000 Listed Companies.
However, in this industry characterized by long-termism, its own exploration and achievements in the agent still need to be tested under the longer-term operation, and in the face of great changes unseen in a century, it is bound to face more and greater uncertainty adjustments.
As a result, Ma Mingzhe clearly realized that "the road to life insurance business is long, not for the moment, but in the long run", and has repeatedly compared the reform of Ping An to a professional practice and value practice, and "there is no end to practice, and there is no end to diligence".
Since the start of this round of reform, the difficulties and pains encountered by Ping An along the way are almost obvious to all, and this has also allowed Ping An to continue to accumulate experience at an astonishing speed, and strengthen its confidence, perseverance and original intention. The road to reform is never a smooth one, and the new quality productivity will not draw an exact outline as soon as it comes up, and all standards and rules, systems and architectures need to step out of the unknown step by step.
Just like the Tang Dynasty Huang Yan Zen Master Shiyun, "How to get the fragrance of plum blossoms without a cold bone". Perhaps this process of cultivation will also be an unexpected encounter with Ping An to continue to lead the industry in the future and bring a new standard of life insurance marketing to the world.
Postscript: What is true practice? The more difficult it is, the more it is practicable
Looking back on the 36 years of peace, we have gone through countless ups and downs:
In the mid-90s of the 20th century, it took the lead in completing the exploration of life insurance from scratch, and became the first life insurance company in China to establish a complete set of systems, processes and standard systems in terms of operation, management, actuarial, product, marketing, training and service models, or a pioneer of domestic individual life insurance;
After the completion of the accumulation from 0 to 1, that is, at the beginning of this century, when the industry as a whole fell into an era when the industry as a whole only knew the scale of premiums but did not know the embedded value and value premiums, and faced huge interest rate losses, Ping An took the lead in benchmarking against top international insurance companies, introducing a large number of management technology and professionals to improve its professional management and refined management level, and making efforts to develop more high-quality personal insurance, laying the foundation for itself to become bigger and stronger;
Even now, in this era of great industrial transformation that has lasted for four or five years, Ping An has taken the lead in reform with almost decisive courage, and has successively promoted all-factor reforms in channels, products, services, science and technology, etc., which have attracted the attention of the industry.
But why is it so difficult this time, the industry is more concerned because:
This time the reform is different from any previous reform, this time China's insurance industry has been from a learner, an imitator, a follower, and a "layman" and a marginalized role in the internationalization of the world, standing at the center of the stage of the world's second largest insurance market, there is not much room for learning and imitation, and it needs to provide new standards and new models for the global insurance industry.
Looking at Ping An's status in the rivers and lakes: the first company in the "world's most valuable insurance brand" and the 16th in the Forbes Global 2000 list of listed companies, what can he do and what must he do?
If we look at the current concept of "new quality productivity" from this perspective, we can understand why Ping An is so resolute in promoting this reform and vigorously promoting the "three good and five-star" system, and Ma Mingzhe continues to emphasize the "original intention", "intentions", "perseverance" and the reason why life insurance management is a practice, "the traditional model of life insurance for hundreds of years has begun to be comprehensively upgraded and iteratively developed", we can understand why Ping An wants to build the "three good and five stars" into a new standard for global life insurance marketing.
The more difficult it is, the more it is practicable.