Director- Agency Channel

Prudential’s purpose is to be partners for every life and protectors for every future. Our purpose encourages everything we do by creating a culture in which diversity is celebrated and inclusion assured, for our people, customers, and partners. We provide a platform for our people to do their best work and make an impact to the business, and we support our people’s career ambitions. We pledge to make Prudential a place where you can Connect, Grow, and Succeed.

At Prudential Health India (PHI), we are on a mission to make Indians healthier, while bridging the health protection gap. This is a Zero to One team undertaking a greenfield health insurance deployment in India committed to building journeys that will truly empathize with the customer and offer a differentiated, bespoke experience.

To partner us in this mission, we are looking for a talented…

Head of Agency Distribution Channel

As Head of Agency, you will be responsible for the end-to-end management and performance of the agency channel. The key responsibilities will include

• Strategy and business planning:
  • Develop the overall zero-to-one Agency strategy for building and launching a future-ready digitally enabled green field agency channel for Prudential Health India.
  • Enable to re-imagine the health insurance agency channel in India with customer centricity at the center, optimize overall customer acquisition costs whilst building a meaningful career proposition for agents.
  • Develop detailed agency implementation plan including agency structure, phased agency build-up strategy, location strategy, branch expansion, organic/in-organic recruitment strategy, training, licensing, compensation design, and performance management to deliver the agency strategy
• Agency force buildup:
  • Build and scale a high-quality future-ready agency force using a combination of organic and in-organic recruitment strategy
  • Build a strong talent acquisition engine to continuously source agency talent from insurance or Financial services Industry or taping the incoming fresh talent into the market.
  • Build an attractive long-term career proposition for Prudential agency force.
  • Recruit, train, and lead a high-performing agency management team with an optimal structure, and right set of incentives to oversee and manage the agency force
  • Collaborate with the Group agency management teams to bring best practices around recruitment and scaling from Prudential’s other markets in Southeast Asia and Greater China to PHI.
• Agency performance management:
  • Provide leadership, direction and resources to the agency function and meet the overall revenue, retention, growth, NPS annual targets set by the organization.
  • Develop and implement a thoughtful and sustainable strategy including compensation, incentives, promotion, training, digital tools etc.  to achieve industry best core agency performance metrics including productivity, activity and average ticket size.
  • Work closely with agents, agency managers, tech, experience, and product teams to understand agent and customer needs and pain points carefully to curate appropriate protection/prevention solutions and customer journeys.
  • Collaborate with the Group agency management teams to bring best practices around performance management from Prudential’s other markets in South East Asia and Greater China to PHI
  • Build an agency force which incentivizes the right balance of customer centricity/doing right by the customer and sales, instead of a typical sales-at-all-costs culture.
• Drive Technology adoption:
  • Embrace technology and innovation to improve efficiency and enhance customer experience.
  • Leverage, localize and deploy digital tools for agency management used across other Prudential markets within Prudential Health India (PHI).
  • Strive towards 100% digitization across the agency value chain in areas like agent onboarding, training/licensing, lead management, policy purchase, performance management, issuance, claims and servicing process.
  • Design and develop innovative sales models (e.g. central lead generation, allocation and management) lead generation models to increase conversion rates.
• People Management:
  • Alignment with cross functional key stakeholders in areas like Product, technology, and operations etc.
• Business Operations:
  • Establish and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the agency's success.
  • Oversee day-to-day operations, ensuring efficiency and compliance with industry regulations, especially in areas of recruitment, commission management etc.
• New initiatives:
  • Propose new initiatives to improve agent productivity and drive down agency management costs through interventions in areas like technology, campaign management, and performance management.

You could be the right candidate if you

• Overall, 15+ years of experience in a distribution related leadership role in insurance industry.
• 10+ years of experience in handling Agency Channel business in Insurance Industry preferably health insurance industry.
• Proven track record of successfully driving business growth and achieving strategic objectives.
• Strong knowledge of insurance operations, regulations, and market trends.
• Excellent leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills.
• Educational qualifications: Any Bachelor's degree; MBA or industry certifications a plus.
• Excellent communication skills
• Should be IRDA certified.
• Always open to embracing change and be able to manage it.
   

This could be the gig for you if you…

• Are passionate about consumer behavior and culture; enjoy spending time with customers to understand what they really want.
• Thrive in environments that celebrate co-creation and collaboration
• Have strong distribution knowledge and built best in class processes from a scratch
• Are passionate about leveraging digital tools to transform customer experience and agent productivity
• Like to work in a culture where everyone can see what others are doing
• Take help from others when stuck and encourage others when there are setbacks
• Always open to embracing change and be able to manage it.

What can make you extra special

• It’s great if you have already read books like Blue Ocean strategy, Measure what matters & Zero to One. Before you saw them mentioned here
• You have real stories to tell about how your team and you challenged convention and took the path less travelled.
• We are keen to listen to your story; doesn’t matter if you tell these stories with a sigh or with excitement. We respect both versions. Truly.

Location: Mumbai/Bengaluru

Prudential is an equal opportunity employer. We provide equality of opportunity of benefits for all who apply and who perform work for our organisation irrespective of sex, race, age, ethnic origin, educational, social and cultural background, marital status, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, disability or part-time / fixed-term work, or any other status protected by applicable law. We encourage the same standards from our recruitment and third-party suppliers taking into account the context of grade, job and location. We also allow for reasonable adjustments to support people with individual physical or mental health requirements.