The rise of insurance business in India has been quite remarkable. While the oldest general and life insurance firms in India have existed much before Independence since 1910s decades, the prospect of individual insurance saw significant improvement after 2000s decade.
The improvement in the last few years have been such that the insurance scene seems to have exploded and several entities have come up with insurance ventures. Just to put in perspective, the new business premium on a cumulative basis across all the life insurance providing firms at the end of November 2017 was 1,229,370 million Indian rupees.
Hence, the inclination to be a part of this booming financial scenario is quite obvious. Since there are potentially increasing number of life insurance policy seekers, the scope of profitability as life insurance agents is quite high apparently.
However, one has to go through the required procedure to become a life insurance agent. Every insurance company has a robust procedure of guiding the aspirants to evolve into a successful Life insurance agent.
The first and foremost step towards becoming a life insurance agent is to approach a life insurance firm and go through the screening interview of the insurance firm.
The basic eligibility of age and nationality is confirmed in this step and the person is then subjected to a career elucidation seminar.
This is an essential step from aspirant point of view since the person is acquainted with the knowledge of insurance industry and its functioning, the prospect of life insurance in the near and long term, the roles and responsibility of a life insurance agent and the benefits of how being a life insurance agent is lucrative from monetary point of view.
After acquainting the overview of becoming an insurance agent, the person can then decide whether they wish to be insurance agent or not.
After deciding to become an insurance agent, the aspirants are made to go through business profiling of understanding the fine nuances of how an insurance agent’s body language and approach should be.
Licensing is the next step where one gets a unique identification of an agent. The IRDAI (Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India) conducts two examinations; namely, IRDAI IC 38 pre-recruitment exam for license as a Life Insurance Agent and IRDA IC 38 exam for becoming a general life insurance agent. The Agent pre-recruitment certification exam is organised by IRDA authorised institutes.
The educational qualification required is minimum 12th grade pass for urban areas and minimum 10th grade pass for rural areas.
Besides clearing the examination, the candidates are also required to complete assigned hours of training from insurance companies to get functional freedom of a life insurance agent.
50 hours of training from an IRDA approved training institute is a must for qualifying as a life or general insurance agent, while for composite licence the required duration of training is 75 hours. After becoming an agent for an insurance firm, the issued insurance licence has validity of 3 years. Thus, one can then perform their function as a life insurance agent.
