Turn insurance consultants into professional personal financial planners

It's time to improve the quality of life insurance consulting.

At the forum "Personal Financial Planning 2024 - Solutions to improve the quality of human resources in the life insurance industry" held today (June 15), Dr. Le Minh Nghia - Chairman of the Vietnam Financial Consulting Association (VFCA) - emphasized that the current reality requires a serious look at the quality of financial consulting services in the life insurance industry. Although there has been significant improvement, there are still many negative points in the eyes of the people.

"A large number of consultants only see this as a short-term job, taking full advantage of relationships to sell contracts, or do not have the capacity to evaluate finances and sell contracts with too large a value or unsuitable products, leading to customers being unable to follow the contract when facing financial pressure... Besides, it is necessary to recognize that current financial consultant training programs mainly address skills, not ensuring enough quality according to international practices while the insurance market is developing rapidly in the years before 2022" - Dr. Le Minh Nghia said.

Dr. Le Minh Nghia - Chairman of the Vietnam Financial Consulting Association - spoke at the event. Photo: FIDT

According to him, the cause is related to the responsibility of 4 parties: state management agencies, insurance companies, life insurance consultants and financial intelligence. To clear the flow of life insurance products of insurance companies to individual beneficiaries, promoting civilized and sustainable development of society, the Chairman of VFCA said that it is time to discuss the story of improving the quality of life insurance consulting to the right standards for customers and find a fundamental and synchronous solution.

Forum “Personal financial planning 2024 – Solutions to improve human resource quality in the life insurance industry”. Photo: FIDT — Forum "Personal financial planning 2024 - Solutions to improve human resource quality in the life insurance industry". Photo: FIDT

In fact, according to Mr. Ngo Thanh Huan - CEO of FIDT Investment Consulting and Asset Management JSC, the life insurance industry in the world is basically divided into 3 stages with different upgraded consulting methods and quality: Pure product - Selling products with financial consulting - Insurance distributed by professional personal financial planners.

Vietnam has been classified by the world's leading insurance institutions such as Prudential as being in phase 2 since 2021. Compared to Singapore or Taiwan (China), which have been in phase 2 for the past few decades. Finally, phase 3 - insurance distributed by professional personal financial planners (in English, Financial Planner), powers such as the US, South Korea, Japan... are in this phase.

Insurance consultants need to improve their comprehensive knowledge

From the perspective of the management agency, Mr. Dao Trung Kien - Deputy Director of the Vietnam Insurance Development Institute (Insurance Management and Supervision Department, Ministry of Finance ) - said that consultants not only need to improve their professional knowledge of insurance but also need to expand their comprehensive understanding of investment, credit, tax and retirement to provide accurate advice, suitable to the financial situation and actual needs of customers.

Mr. Kien informed that the Ministry of Finance is continuing to strengthen management, supervision, inspection, examination and strict handling of violations of the law to deter and increase compliance of enterprises. Establish a hotline to receive and process feedback and recommendations from organizations and individuals on the insurance sector.

On the other hand, the Ministry of Finance also closely coordinates with relevant agencies in supervising the activities of insurance agents, especially insurance agents that are banks, to ensure that this distribution channel develops healthily and in the right direction, including signing a coordination regulation between the Ministry of Finance (Insurance Supervision and Management Department) and the State Bank.

Source: https://laodong.vn/kinh-doanh/dua-tu-van-vien-bao-hiem-thanh-nha-hoach-dinh-tai-chinh-ca-nhan-chuyen-nghiep-1353309.ldo