Retention Strategies for Front Line Sales Employees A Study of Insurance Sector in India

Abstract

Insurance is not bought but it is sold. Insurance companies sell dreams to the people. It is an unpleasant thing which must be sold in a pleasant manner. Therefore, it really requires talent. Handling attrition problem is the major HR challenge faced by this industry. Hence, this study is undertaken to study the rate of attrition in life insurance industry, the reasons behind attrition and possible measures to overcome it. newlineInsurance industry in India includes both types of insurance namely Life Insurance, and General insurance. Life insurance provides life insurance service i.e. risk cover to life and general insurance provides a wide variety of insurance like Motor insurance, property insurance, health insurance, fire insurance, marine insurance and commercial insurance etc. In 2003, the rest of the world had 8% contribution of insurance industry to the overall economy whereas the same is below 3% in the case of India. However, rest of the world s penetration or insurance to GDP ratio has been declining after 2003 and kept on declining till 2013, in case of India, it is maximum in 2009 and then witnessed a steep decline 2011. It is impossible to consider insurance company s retention strategies without also looking at the compensation package of employees. Every compensation plan should be constructed to help the firm achieve its strategic goals and to attract, reward and retain the right people. If the plan does not accomplish these two objectives, it should be restructured. newlineThe present study is descriptive in nature. It contains descriptions of phenomena or characteristics associated with the current subject population and basically answer the questions who, what when where and how of the topic. The objectives of this study are to find out the factors affecting the decision of an individual to join Insurance industry, to study the factors affecting retention rate in insurance sector in India, to find out the strategies for retention adopted by the insurance companies in India, to compare impact of demographi