‘Rakshana Alevi Karuwaneni’ launched by SLI

Deepal Sooriyaarachchi dedicated his latest book of the very popular Sinhalen Business series to the insurance advisors as he relinquishes duties from active involvement in business as the Managing Director of AVIVANDB Insurance PLC.

This is the 8th book in the series and titled ‘Rakshana Alevi Karuwaneni’.

Deepal Sooriyaarachchi presents a copy of the book to the Chairperson of Insurance Board of Sri Lanka Indrani Sugathadasa

Deepal captures 20 years of his experience in the industry and his insights are presented in his usual simple Sinhala with down to earth examples and witty captions that involves the reader.

The book was dedicated to the insurance advisors at the recently concluded NAFLIA congress the forum for life insurance advisors in the country.

Since it is the insurance advisor who is the main person that brings the message of insurance to general public Deepal argues that enhancing the professional competency is critical for the improvement of the industry and the benefit to the society. It is estimated that an average agent has to contact twenty prospective customers to get ten sales presentations to result in five life insurance policies.

Assuming that approximately 500,000 new life insurance policies are sold annually the agents must be contacting at least five million prospective customers. If the competency is high of the advisors thus meet prospective customers that is the best form of education of people about the importance of insurance opines Deepal.

The book has been praised by the Industry leaders such as Manjula De Silva the president of the Insurance Association, Deepthi Lokuarachchi the president of the Sri Lanka Insurance Institute.

The book covers a brief history of Deepal’s personal experiences to highlight the importance of life insurance, how it can be introduced to young professionals the story of agency professionalisation, a very simple explanation to insurance business through the use of day to day examples and how specific issues such as lapsation, and non achievement of business targets affect the company, how different stages of life cycle of a person can attract different insurance solutions, market segmentation using the ability to maintain a policy and the appreciation of insurance, consumer buying behaviour and the applications in insurance selling process and the role the agent can play, the need to become a professional business person and what need to be done to reach that level including the concept of professional ability, fact find, practice buy out etc.

Book introduces some novel concepts such as Freedom through Discipline –how to be memorable agents through superior service and CRM, five reasons for not achieving goals (RAPID) the role of the family in the success of the agent, how to protect the brand image of the company, some practical tips to make sales meetings effective and the code of ethics adopted at NAFLIA.

In addition there are four appendices covering the principles of insurance from Lasitha Wimalarthne’s book, an introduction to ULIP products, Agents position from a legal perspective, and the list of regulations that govern insurance.

The book is initially distributed through the Sri Lanka Insurance Institute.