What are Covered Calls?

The disturbing behavior of insurance calls has attracted the attention of regulators. In November 2010, the Beijing Insurance Regulatory Bureau took the lead in issuing a document prohibiting salesmen of various life insurance companies in their jurisdictions from dialing numbers, randomly dialing, and making phone calls to purchase unfamiliar lists.

Life insurance phone

It is understood that the ban is mainly aimed at telephone harassment. It is clear that life insurance companies must rely on legally obtained information to conduct telemarketing business. Telemarketers can still make calls to their own customers, referral customers, and have the consent of the speaker in advance. So, will such a ban have an impact on existing life insurance telemarketing? Although similar regulations have not yet been issued in the Shanghai market, pioneers in Shanghai telemarketing, such as China Merchants Cigna Life Insurance and Haikang Life Insurance, have welcomed such bans.

"In fact, the joint venture life insurance telephone marketing mainly adopts cooperation with bank credit cards and can be regarded as a referral customer in a certain sense. Before calling the customer, the company will adopt a certain customer stratification and choose an appropriate time period, which is more targeted. "China Merchants Life Insurance Shanghai Branch pointed out that the disorderly dialing by marketers has caused a great impact on regular telemarketing. Now there is such a ban on the development of compliant life insurance telemarketing.

Relevant persons in the Beijing Insurance Regulatory Bureau pointed out that as a new marketing channel, telemarketing has been abused by life insurance marketers in recent years, and there is a tendency of "bad currency to expel good coins", especially dialing by number, random calling, Buying unfamiliar lists and making phone calls, which are nuisances to customers, have greatly negatively affected life insurance phone marketing.

"Especially when the purchase list is called, the marketer who called not only knows the customer's name and age, but sometimes even the spouse, housing, and private car are well-known, making customers feel that there is no privacy at all." Some experts pointed out. In response to this situation, the Beijing Insurance Regulatory Bureau has required that life insurance companies in their jurisdictions not be treated negatively, and must report the rectification situation before December 20.

In addition to being blindly beaten by marketers stopped by the Beijing Insurance Regulatory Bureau, there are currently two main models of domestic telemarketing: the first is to have a certain customer "database", to identify customers in advance, and make targeted calls , Recommend the corresponding insurance product; the second is also "unfamiliar visit", that is, call the customer randomly, first give a simple insurance, get customer trust, and then call the customer again after a period of time to inquire about the service experience of gift insurance, etc. , Try to get the opportunity to interview and then sell other types of insurance. There is no clear statement as to whether the second type of telemarketing is within the ban.

Relevant persons of the Shanghai Insurance Industry Association pointed out that for the telemarketing model, it should be distinguished between individual marketers 'behavior and corporate behavior. Individual marketers' behaviors are mostly product-oriented, and most of their sales are universal or dividend-type products, and most joint ventures The products sold by life insurance telemarketing are basically products that are easy to understand, have low sales costs, and low premiums, especially accident insurance and short-term health insurance.

"Protected products have positive significance for expanding insurance coverage and giving full play to the social 'stabilizer' function of insurance. Telephone marketing channels, insurance marketer channels, and other channels can complement each other and further increase the social penetration of insurance." Taikang Life Insurance Shanghai The relevant person of the branch sales department pointed out that different sales activities should be treated differently.

First frequent harassment regardless of time

Case: Mr. Zhang was the earliest customer who applied for mobile number 139. He has not changed his mobile phone number for more than ten years. Recently, Mr. Zhang was furious with frequent calls for insurance sales. "Sometimes I'm talking to customers. When it comes to critical moments, calls for insurance sales can affect the progress and atmosphere of negotiations." Sometimes I get it at 6 or 7 am The phone for selling insurance, now, when Mr. Zhang heard that it was from an insurance company, he immediately hung up.

Idiomatic tricks: Stubborn. Use personal information from various channels to constantly dial and continue to build relationships with consumers.

Support: Frequent sales calls can be rejected directly and reflected to banks and other institutions that have reserved personal information. Mr. Zhang's experience is not unique. Ms. Yin, who has worked in China Life's telephone insurance sales department, said that constantly calling customers every day is their most important job. Whether customers are willing to answer the phone or not, the number of daily phone tasks must carry out. Repeated calls are also common without a new number source. Ms. Yin said that the numbers starting with 139 belong to the earliest customers who own mobile phones. Their asset status is often better than that of ordinary customers. Such numbers are more likely to be redialed repeatedly.

Case 2 refers to over-commitment of deer to horse

Case: Ms. Li received a call. The other party said that Ms. Li was fortunate to become the annual customer of the insurance company. The prize is an accident insurance. As long as she deposits more than 200 yuan per month to the bank for 10 consecutive years, she can enjoy 20 years and 200,000. Yuan's accident insurance, which also has financial management functions, yields as high as 6%, which is higher than the fixed deposit rate. Ms. Li feels that this type of insurance is very cost-effective, and she agrees to buy it. A few years later, Miss Li found that the rate of return was not as high as that of the telemarketer at the time. After calling the company and asking, she found that the 6% rate of return was not the average annual rate of return, but the sum of the 20-year rate of return. The rate is only 0.3%, which is lower than the current interest rate.

Conventional tactics: Gold is not enough. The insurance products in the telemarketing outlet are all-round, without any defects, to avoid problems such as surrender and hesitation. Telemarketing introduced very favorable conditions at the beginning of the call to attract potential customers, and then constantly brainwashed the customers.

Tips: Ping An, a senior insurance agent at Ping An, reminds consumers to prevent over-commitments from telemarketing insurers. On the one hand, they carefully ask sensitive questions on the phone, and insurance companies have audio recordings. On the other hand, read the contents carefully before signing the contract, understand the income situation and insurance status before making a decision.

The third set of fraudulent contract traps

Case: Miss Shi received a call from a credit card center of a bank. The other party knew the account of Miss Shi and recommended an insurance product that can only be purchased by customers with good credit in the bank. 365 yuan, you can get back the principal after paying 10 years, you can call to buy at any time. Ms. Shi said that she could consider it. The other party hoped that Ms. Shi could confirm the ID number and credit card account number. Ms. Shi said it again. In the afternoon, she received a text message pre-authorizing the credit card debit. Miss Shi believes that this is fraud. First, she did not confirm the purchase and did not sign a contract. Secondly, the telemarketers only said that they checked the information and did not indicate that the purpose of checking the information was to pay.

Idiomatic tricks: No word of mouth. When no definite response from the policyholder is obtained, the policyholder is required to state the bank account number and identity card number.

Support: China Merchants Cigna's agent stated that the form of verbal consent on the phone, which is a form of debit authorization, belongs to the pre-authorization of credit cards. The verbal commitment of the customer shall prevail, and the insurance contract and instructions will be sent to the policyholder. Currently, many companies pre-authorize telemarketing products through bank credit cards. However, telemarketing insurance also has a 10-day hesitation period. If the policyholder regrets it, the premium can be recovered.

The method of telemarketing insurance was first introduced by some foreign life insurance companies. Compared with traditional channels, it has irreplaceable advantages. An insurance company has conducted a survey. Compared with the traditional face-to-face sales model, telemarketing can directly communicate with customers, and has a stronger initiative and pertinence. Compared with communication forms such as Internet and email, telemarketing has It's better than it is more interactive, and the feedback rate is higher. It has the advantages that traditional sales and new e-commerce sales do not have. In addition, for insurance companies, electricity sales can save costs, and fees such as intermediary channel fees can be saved, helping insurance companies to make faster profits. Since the launch of the telemarketing business in 2007, Ping An Insurance's premiums have grown at an annual rate of more than 100%, and the telemarketing channel has been profitable in just two years.

The "other edge" of this sharp knife is slashed at consumers. For most residents, this "carpet" phone bombing is an intolerable harassment. You who are reading this article must have received insurance sales calls under various names. Obviously, insurance companies know that getting the other party to buy insurance is more difficult than going straight. So usually they will introduce insurance products to customers in the way of giving back customer accident insurance for free. If this customer is interested in this product, they will continue to follow up and carry out in-depth development after giving them insurance. If the customer is interested in continuing to insure, they will promote other insurance products. Of course, there is a high probability of being rejected. However, many people report that different insurance companies will repeatedly call their phones for marketing, which makes most people feel disgusted.

On the other hand, people are more worried about their privacy and information security risks. Where did these insurance companies get customer information? It is understood that there are such a group of people in the society who specialize in selling customer information, and thousands of customer information are packaged and sold to industries that need it. Obviously, no one will admit that this information is not so bright. However, some insiders said: For those phone users who explicitly refused to guarantee, the company will make corresponding records and will not call again. For users with preliminary intentions, corresponding records will also be made for the second telemarketing. In general, even for users who have intentions but have not signed a bill, the number of calls to them is generally not more than three times to avoid causing too much interruption to users.

In addition to industry self-discipline, can the laws and regulations of the corresponding departments also run in a timely manner? The thinking left for the entire insurance industry is still increasing. As consumers, we also hope to see the entire insurance environment getting healthier as soon as possible.