Kathmandu. The head of the training department of Nepal Life Insurance Company is Rojesh Basnet. Basnet has been active in the insurance sector for a long time. Prior to joining Nepal Life, he worked in various life insurance companies. Basnet has experience in sales, training and teaching. Basnet, who completed his ABA from Apex College, has an MPhil degree in management from Kathmandu University. Summary of the conversation with the same Basnet at Insurance Talk}:
You are at the helm of the training department of the insurance company that claims to be the most trustworthy in Nepal. However, even today, insurance is established as a business of fear. Agents are going door-to-door and going to the place where if something happens tomorrow, who will see you, that’s why the policy. Why is this happening?
It has been almost five decades since the introduction of insurance in Nepal, but the real understanding of insurance is not good. Insurance companies have been conducting various awareness literacy programmes for more than two decades. Even today in the 21st century, the understanding of insurance in our society is still incomplete and incomplete. That’s why insurance, as you mentioned above, has become a business of fear. It is also a challenge to overcome this and move forward.
In fact, insurance is not a business of fear but of happiness today. In this direction, we have to transform insurance.
Insurance companies’ training to their agents or employees selling policies seems to be more on motivational than content. Does it mean that what should have been said and explained in the training was not understood when it was focused on that?
That was the case in the past. At Nepal Life Insurance, we have been establishing a separate training department for three years. We have been working to focus on content for the professional development of the employees including agents and branch heads and to explain the real insurance in the society and in the villages. In the current training, we focus solely on insurance content. We have been trying to explain from the root why the science of insurance was actually developed. Now we are providing that training to our agent friends and branch heads. What is insurance? What was insurance developed for? What is the benefit of insurance? What is the loss? We have been talking about which insurance will be good for the customer to buy.
We also find insurance to be one of the most difficult professions in the world. TAG_OPEN_strong_43 You used to say that we have reached the range of 44-45 percent. You have already said that even after five decades of history, we still have a lot to understand. Is it known as the most difficult because insurance is done more by creating compelling conditions rather than on the basis of necessity?
The first thing is that it is difficult to get insurance, it is not easy. It is also not easy to pay insurance. A society like ours, where institutions or the world’s economy still recognize it as a developing country. In such a situation, insurance has not been fully established in us. In such a situation, it is a difficult profession as we have to move forward from the situation of providing insurance by spreading awareness. But from the other side, I don’t think any profession is easy. Even if you look at different types of products, traders or others, there are their own stories.
It is difficult to sell everything that needs to be sold. It is also more difficult to sell because it has to be sold for our benefit and for good. For example, it is a little difficult to sell medicines, the doctor should write the prescription, the doctor should show you a little fear, if you do not take the medicine, then your health will deteriorate and it may not happen tomorrow. Only then will the patient buy medicines. Insurance is exactly the same. In this way, the drug also looks like force selling. Similarly, insurance also looks like force selling. Because it takes time to sell good things, it takes time to explain.
Insurance is a savings. From the other side, we have grown up in a culture of spending. We find it easy to spend but difficult to save. You don’t think we will consult anyone to spend, you don’t think we should take it. But if you don’t want to save, you go home to seek advice. That is why it is difficult to insure and get it done because of the society that has not developed the habit of saving. I don’t think it will be difficult to insure if we are able to explain insurance well.
You called insurance a savings. I asked in this context. While selling insurance policies, we usually prioritize that this policy is saving, it is security. How to put it on numbers 1, 2, 3? Where is your priority? What is it okay to sell and what to buy?
1, 2, 3 The main function of insurance is financial security. To put it more in the language understood by the general public, insurance is the protection of income. I like to call insurance the ‘lock of income’ in a language understood by everyone. You have everything in our house. We get out of the house. Thieves can come without notice, without playing the instrument. That’s why we lock the house so that we have to protect the goods. Similarly, death can occur at any time without notice. In such a situation, life insurance has been made to protect our income. Therefore, the first task of life insurance is to ensure that our income does not die for our family, it does not stop. Life insurance is made so that the family members dependent on income do not lose their source of income on any day. Life insurance is to be done so that our income is not stopped when we are not there.
Apart from this, there is also a savings aspect in insurance. If it is difficult to meet our basic needs in the coming days, then it is advisable to have life insurance so that the savings made today will make it easier tomorrow.
16-17% of the people in Nepal are below the poverty line. 8-10 percent people do not have to be insured, they are financially strong. In such a situation, who will get life insurance?
Insurance is necessary for every person. From heavy people to big businessmen, everyone is earning to run their lives on a daily basis. So the simple answer is that the person needs insurance. The person who has income.
If you have an income you need insurance. If you ask whose door needs a lock, you have to answer it on everyone’s door. So is insurance.
There is also a need for a lock for people who have nothing in the house. A lock is also needed for people with normal belongings throughout the house. Insurance also requires insurance from all parties, who earn income. But where is the question, how much to lock? If you have only one or two items in your house, then the lock is small, but if there is a TV, jewelry, if there is an important treasure, then the lake needs a big lake. If you have a small income, you should get the same kind of life insurance. If you have a lot of income, you have to get a big kind of life insurance.
