Products and insurers' financial strength highly prized by advisers and agents

Life insurers seeking to win advisers' business may want to step up their training sessions. A LIMRA survey released Tuesday found that 32% of 616 producers picked an aspect of training as the most valued service offered by insurers. Among those who ranked training No. 1, product training garnered the most votes (80%), followed by sales training (46%) and one-on-one coaching (32%). Technological support came in at a distant second, with 20% of the vote for the most important service, according to LIMRA. Among those respondents, 86% think web access to customer records is either critical or very important. Meanwhile, 82% consider internet access to new business applications important. In assessing what is important to them, survey respondents also were asked to identify what they deem “core elements” to any insurer with whom they would do business. Among those elements, an insurers' product line ranked No. 1 among 38% of advisers, down slightly from 39% in 2008 when the survey was last taken. Not surprisingly, advisers also have become more interested in companies' solvency since the worst of the financial crisis. Twenty-six percent of producers consider the financial strength of an insurer the No. 2 core element, up from just 16% in 2008. “While awareness of insurers' financial strength has increased for producers, a competitive product line remains by far the No. 1 consideration for producers when choosing a company with which to place their traditional fixed-life-insurance business,” Denise Marvel, assistant research director of LIMRA's distribution research, said in a statement.