The total number of Indian agents registering with the Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT), a prestigious international trade association of insurance agents, has more than tripled to 1,931 agents for 2007 compared with 532 in 2006.
To qualify for the MDRT, an Indian insurance agent has to get a premium (read business) of Rs 23.92 lakh to his insurance company or earn a commission of Rs 5.98 lakh.
A remarkable achievement is that India's third-largest private sector insurance company, SBI Life Insurance, has been ranked fifth across the world in terms of number of MDRT members, which is 801.
SBI Life is ahead of companies such as AXA Advisors and Prudential Financial of the USA, Met Life of Korea, Prudential Life Insurance Company in Japan, Life Insurance Corporation of India and Max New York Life in India, both of which occupy the 21st position with 345 MDRTs.
Reliance Life Insurance occupies the 39th position with 187 MDRT advisors.
The MDRT has a total of 35,781 qualifiers, which is 1 per cent of the total insurance agents or advisors in the world.
SBI Life also stands third among all companies situated outside the USA. In terms of the first-time MDRT, SBI Life ranks No 1 with 99.50 per cent of registered MDRTs as first timers.
Of the total 12,000 insurance advisors by the end of September 2006 of SBI Life, 801 agents registered for the MDRT.
An interesting fact was that 30 per cent of those who qualified were women, said Rajiv K Gupta, senior vice-president, retail and corporate agency, SBI Life.
Says U S Roy, managing director and CEO of SBI Life, "We focus a lot on productivity and encourage our advisors to qualify and register for the MDRT by incentivising them with monetary benefits.
We are also considering sponsoring their trip to the US. Our aim for the next year is to be among the top-three players in the world. This year, we plan to have 2,000 agents, who will register for MDRT."
Within the MDRT, there are three levels such as the basic MDRT, the Court of Table (CoT) and Top of Table (ToT). For the agent to qualify for the CoT, he has to do thrice the MDRT business, while to qualify for the ToT, the insurance agent has to do six times the business required for the MDRT.
According to the requirement in 2006, to qualify for 2007, CoT advisors had to mop up a premium of Rs 71.77 lakh or earn a commission of Rs 17.94 lakh.
