Ling han-chul, a journalist from the southern bank of china
“it was human, it was professional; it was policy sales, it was planning.” an insurance agent told economic reporters for the 21st century。
The context of this sentence is a long and brutal “cleaning” and “remodelling” of the insurance agent industry. According to the white paper on the ecology of the china insurance intermediary market, by the end of 2024, the number of phc insurance marketing workers had fallen to 2. 64 million, and although it had fallen by more than 70 per cent from the historical peak of 9. 12 million in 2019, the decline was markedly narrow and stable compared to 2. 81 million at the end of 2023。
In this new phase, journalists have observed that the quality transformation of agents is showing two different paths: one is institution-led, working with top academic institutions to improve the professional literacy of agents through systematic and high standards of training and certification; the other is through the creation of an ip by agents to gain trust in professional content。
These two paths appear to be different, and together they point to one end point — from a single policy seller to a client-centred resource integrator and solution provider, whose core competitiveness is no longer just financial expertise, but rather integration planning for multiple resources, such as selection, collaboration with health care, old age and wealth management, and where industry competition has shifted from product-to-man to ecological construction to integrated service delivery capacity。
The agent industry enters the elite breakout cycle
Over the past decade or so, china's insurance industry has rapidly achieved the milestones of market education and business expansion through a massive expansion of “human-sea tactics”, significantly increasing the penetration of insurance products and laying the foundation for a rapid expansion of the industry。
However, as the demographic dividend fades and consumer awareness awakes, this pattern of broad distribution becomes unsustainable. It is widely recognized within industry that the industry has entered a new cycle of “stock game” and “breeding out of the elite” when the size of the proxies has fallen to 3 million。
This game is first reflected in the redefinition of “incremental talent”. It used to be a "head pull" and now it's a "squeal."。
In the case of the “senior talent scheme”, which has been in operation for six months for a life of peace, the recruitment threshold has been set at “undergraduate level and above, 28-55 years old, with an income of over 400,000 in previous years”. The data show that since the project was piloted in june 2025, more than 600 highly skilled managers have been recruited for safe life, of whom 85 per cent are undergraduates and above. Some of the members graduated from leading universities in china, beijing, new york and chinese, hong kong, and nearly 30 per cent earned more than one million in previous years。
Where do these “new agents” come from? The journalists found that they were mostly senior practitioners in other industries: the former general manager of the private business centre of the bank, the medical director of the san ace hospital, the chairman of the business council, the financial master v and the owner of small and medium-sized enterprises。
Behind this phenomenon of “cross-border migration” is the double projection of changes in the macroeconomic environment and individual career choices。
Zhao xing, a safety and welfare consultant (formerly the head of the bank), told the journalists that his choice to move was motivated by the need to look at the income potential of the insurance industry and the mechanisms that maximize subjective activity。
In an interview with journalists for economic journalism in the twenty-first century, chen junhui, director-general of the risk operations and training department of the safe life headquarters, stated that as the insurance industry developed gradually towards rationality and a long-term orientation of the business development model, it had become an industry consensus to promote the high-quality development of the workforce of agents, move towards professionalization and specialization. The key to professionalization and specialization is to control the “entry points” of talent and “culture points” of talent capture。
According to it, the year 2026 will see the introduction of a high-skilled “quota recruitment system” which will not blindly pursue the scale, but rather the strict application of the strategic requirements of “quality access” and “one more, one more and one more” based on the allocation of recruitment to existing high-skilled development results by affiliates. In terms of performance results, as of mid-january of this year, the high per capita value premium was double that of the same period。
Professional certification goes hand in hand with ip construction
In the context of the increased recruitment threshold for the elite of insurance agents, it is clear that the traditional insurance rhetorical training has lapsed. How to retain this elite in the insurance sector and evolve from “sellers” to “advisers” is the biggest issue facing individual risk firms。
Recently, the “senior manager development programme no. 1 of 2026”, designed jointly with the university of chinghua, landed in beijing. In addition, in recent years, risk companies such as xinhua insurance, friends ' life, and chinese life have worked in similar cooperation with well-known institutions at home and abroad in an attempt to re-establish their proxy career through the empowerment of higher education。
In the “senior manager development programme no. 1 of 2026”, the safe life course was not limited to training in insurance marketing techniques, but instead introduced a teacher at the university of tsinghua school of administration to teach global economic volatility, wealth management logic and interdisciplinary knowledge。
Chen junhui referred to this model as an upgraded practice of “school partnerships, co-development”. He expressed the hope that, in cooperation with the top academic institutions, it would be possible in the future to build the industry's leading professional moat around professional certification, capacity enhancement and operational applications。
Parallel to agency-led “college” certification, another trend is the rise of “personal ips”。
With the rapid development of social media, short video platforms, consumers ' cognitive, comparative and decision-making links before the acquisition of insurance have accelerated online. Research has shown that online channels have become important entry points for access to insurance information, especially among younger groups。
In this context, the creation of professional images from media platforms, the transmission of insurance values and the extension of service boundaries have evolved into an industry consensus. Through the social media, a growing number of highly qualified agents are sharing insurance knowledge, financial ideas, health management information and gradually building themselves into trusted specialists in subdivisions such as wealth inheritance, pension planning or health security, in order to gain customer identification and build long-term trust。
As a result, a number of insurance institutions have introduced agency ip construction programmes. For example, grand child insurance marketing services ltd. (hereinafter referred to as the “big child insurance services”) has recently launched the ip pioneer program to create full growth wheels for consultants, from individual brand names to commercial value realization, through the synergistic drive of the ai child making planet, capability propulsion, platform straight stations, the enabling symbiotic chain, the private domain conversion field, and the six core functions of the account evolution module. Safe life has launched the orange star program agent empowerment project, which works to create new teams of agents in the digital age, build insurance “experts” ips, and help agents to access customers and service clients online。
The executive vice-president of the grand child insurance service, lee xiaoqin, explained that his ip pioneer plan stated that ip was not a cyber-red, but a sedentary brand asset; the insurance consultant needed not a general flow, but an accurate group of customers who matched value recognition in depth。
Industry analyses that proxy ipization is not a simple flow realization, but is essentially a precursor to trust. Through the continuous output of professional content, an agent can establish an initial trust relationship in front of the client, thus significantly reducing communication costs。
Ecowar is the end
As the population's wealth grows and the demographic structure changes, client demand has been purchased from a single insurance product and upgraded to a desire for comprehensive solutions such as wealth management, health care and quality old age。
“customs no longer merely buy a policy, but seek a security and service plan that covers the entire life cycle.” according to a senior industry observer。
As a result, both joint training with higher education institutions and the development of personal ips for agents end up in the delivery of customer services. At this point, the era of one-on-one fighting is over and replaced by “ecological warfare”。
In interviews, journalists found that “insurance + well-being” had become the core leverage of major risk firms for agents. As china's ageing society accelerates, client anxiety about the “long-lived age” has gone beyond the financial dimension and extends to access to medical resources and old-age services。
This time, the “seniority plan” was launched, in full known as the “insurance and rehabilitation consultant, kottsung manager development programme”. This must in itself reveal that the agent's function is being sold from a single financial product, evolving into a three-tiered transmission of value: “financial adviser, family doctor, elderly housekeeper”。
Chen jinghui pointed out that the ecological advantages of “insurance + services” are fully realized through the differentiated resources of the sanctuary group “integrated finance + medical ageing”, extending the value of insurance from financial compensation to full-time companionship, giving clients a life-cycle watch and “from compensation to company”。
In fact, the “ecological war” within the industry has already struck. The hwp (health and wealth planner) of tecon's life, the “caucasion and wealth planner” of the taicang life insurance, the “xin generation recruitment programme” of the xinhua insurance and the “wlp” training system for full life cycle planners” emphasize not only the integration of “insurance + services”。
