Manulife Vietnam: Professionalising advisers through technology

Robert Trieu, chief agency officer for Manulife Vietmam

Why is professionalism such a virtue for financial advisers?

Life insurance is a long-term promise between a customer and an insurer. It offers peace of mind knowing that you are financially protected. It is also complex and there are many types of insurance solutions that serve different needs. Having a good adviser is key to cutting through all the noise. It’s an adviser’s job to help customers learn and understand what is important to them and help them get the right protection based on what they really need.

The professionalism of advisers is extremely important for the life insurance industry and for the customers. In an industry that sells promises, a professional agency force equipped with the knowledge, skills, and ethics will gain customer and public trust. For me, this is how we help bring professionalism and credibility to the industry.

With insurance digitalisation moving at pace, will this eventually diminish the role of the adviser in the future?

Well, think about it this way: anyone can go and do a workout by themselves at the gym using the available equipment. Yet by having a personal trainer you can be guided to achieve an even better result using the same equipment thanks to their knowledge and expertise.

For me, the idea of digitalisation is not to replace humans or advisers for that matter. It is about using technology to augment the human touch and help achieve the best outcome.

While technology is becoming more and more ubiquitous, it’s important to remember that life insurance is a human-centric industry, where the part of sharing, listening, and trusting creates value in the products.

What main challenges are advisers facing today, and how is Manulife Vietnam helping them address these obstacles?

The life insurance industry is under pressure from digitalisation and over the past few years, we have been professionalising our agency force through technology to address this transformation.

As digital habits take root, today’s customers have become more discerning and have high expectations for products or services they intend to purchase. They prefer simple, convenient, and hands-on solutions, and they do not want to be left waiting for insurance quotes or policies.

The first challenge that advisers are currently facing is how to better adopt digital skills so that they can offer insurance advice and empower customers to make the right decisions quickly. At Manulife Vietnam, our advisers are equipped with customer service solutions such as ePOS and MAxX D, which help them connect and provide support to customers in an easy, fast, and convenient way.

Compared to the past, customers nowadays are also much better informed. That means insurance advisers need in-depth knowledge to be able to provide much more detailed information to achieve customer satisfaction.

Our recently launched ManuAcademy platform does just that. The digital learning platform supports our advisers to develop their knowledge through all stages of their careers, in turn helping them better address a customer’s health, retirement, and protection needs.

ManuAcademy is underpinned by AI, delivering tailored educational information to advisers. It uses gamification and rewards to encourage regular participation and long-term engagement.

In the era of technology, it’s important for advisers to have an effective workflow management process to keep up with the sales demands and better serve customers.

For this, Manulife Vietnam created MaxX D, a mobile application that acts as a personal virtual assistant for advisers, helping them with target setting, activity planning and tracking, sales and recruitment funnels, and hierarchy and performance analytics – all in a user-friendly interface.

What is the most important factor to drive a market-leading agency force like at Manulife Vietnam?

For me, quality recruitment and development are foundational to driving the growth of our market-leading, digitally-enabled agency force in Vietnam. For that, we continue to upgrade our financial adviser’s skills and professionalism with high-quality training and education programmes.

Currently, we are working on creating a top-level learning content series called Manulife Master Class, which is a compilation of short videos by our MDRT advisers and successful managers where they share secrets to their success. The Manulife Master Class series will be launched exclusively on the ManuAcademy platform and is another innovative way we are building a market-leading agency force.

Manulife retains prime MDRT ranking in Vietnam Manulife Vietnam retained its pole position in the Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT) 2022 rankings, reaffirming the insurer’s commitment to delivering advice and solutions that drive financial security.

Manulife Vietnam brings the workplace of the future Manulife Vietnam has opened the doors to its innovative MClass office in the centre of Hanoi, unveiling an exciting, new, and modern workplace with a unique customer experience.