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Chillibreeze Interview with Indranil Sarkar
1. You have been an Insurance Officer for most of your professional life. Can you tell us your career path? Are any particular degrees necessary for this field of work? I will take the last question first. No specialised degree is necessary to launch oneself into an insurance career. However, graduation in any discipline is a must. Regarding my career, I joined LIC at an early age of 23 as a direct recruit Assistant Administrative Officer. In course of time, I moved up the ladder to become a branch in-charge. But then, always wanting to eject myself off my comfort zone I joined Bajaj Life Insurance Company as a Senior Divisional Manager. After 5 years I got an offer to be the CEO of Eris Marketing Services Ltd. Now my old friend and I have started our own enterprise.
My partner and I have started a venture – wherein we provide consultancy services to corporates and other entrepreneurs in the areas of project finance through banks, HR solutions and other issues like management consultancy. I also advice individuals on management of their personal finance, assets and liabilities. I guess the risk appetite is pretty high in today’s generation. But I would follow Warren Buffett’s advice to rather test the depth of a river with one foot while the other is firmly grounded on the shore. These days life can be great fun, so young professionals starting their career, may go full blast and spend to enjoy their youth. But it pays to be adequately insured and to have a medical insurance policy (other than the one provided by the employing company). Also, keep monitoring the PF balance. 3. As an insurance officer, did you deal with customers personally? Any interesting pointers on how to communicate with strangers so they listen? Insurance is basically a service industry and without dealing personally with customers you have no chance to survive. My only advice is that we should intently listen to the customer and then help him with the solution. Too many relations get complicated just because the insurance official not only fails to understand/ deliberately overlooks the problem of the customer but also tries to impose a solution on him, which is most favourable for the official or the insurance company. 4. What are the challenges in insurance underwriting? Any secret that you would like to share with our readers – something that an insurance professional would never tell us? Insurance underwriting is basically assessment of risk. The challenges are many – which may include misrepresentation of the case by an insurance agent, wrong medical diagnosis etc. An underwriter has to base his judgement on the data of the client available to him and not the client himself. With the advent of the internet and other media, there is all most nothing in underwriting that is away from public domain – but this may be worth sharing. Many people are rejected policies because of their poor health condition. If they are in a position to pay higher premium, they may appeal for the same to the company. Depending on the condition of their ailment, premium may be considerably increased or their life may be accepted on lien i.e., the premium is high in the earlier stages of the policy, but gradually reduces as the policy becomes older and health condition of the policy holder gets better.
Life Insurance companies try to push policies that have both the insurance and savings component in their premium cost. In my opinion, one must always focus on plain life insurance and ask for term policies where the premium covers only life insurance. For savings, other avenues are always open like banks, mutual funds, PPF, NSC etc. One must remember that the cost of saving through an insurance policy is always much higher than most of the other modes of savings. Let us not confuse insurance with our savings – the two are entirely different concepts. 6. Any tips for insurance salesmen to overcome the sometimes dismissive attitude of the general public and still manage to sell them a policy or two? Can you tell us more about good salesmanship? Every human on this planet needs an insurance policy some time or the other in his life. Therefore, the dismissive attitude is actually a myth. Having said so, it must be understood that selling insurance is not an exact job, and every sales person develops his own skill. However good an insurance salesman can be, his success ratio cannot be more than 3 out of every 10 prospects he meets at one go. Repeat visits will definitely give him the balance 7 persons in his kitty. For beginners this ratio is 1 out of 10. To be a good insurance salesman one must be a good networker and should be very persistent in his efforts. Check the results of the writing contest for the First Quarter, 2012 Related links: Social Entrepreneurship: An Alternative Career? Question for readers: At what age do you think having a life insurance policy is a must?
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Indranil loves reading and analysing strategic situations around the world in general and India in particular. He has published quite a few articles of strategic importance in some leading magazines in India. He also loves and excels in advising people about their individual financial planning and this is a part of his current entrepreneurial venture. Indranil also enjoys long drives with his wife and daughter. 
