SHORTAGE OF INSURANCE SALESWOMEN IN JAPAN

Japanese assurers are urgently looking for women to become “Seiho ladies” — insurance saleswomen who sell manly through contacts and door-to-door in their neighbourhood. The seiho system in Japan developed as a historical quirk after World War II when war widows needed the work and insurers needed the distribution channels. However, its birth as a “desperation job” has meant that, despite the potential for high rewards, younger females have shown little interest in pursuing it as a career. Major life assurers set each branch a recruitment quota, which has led to employees attempting to recruit strangers on the street, adding to the job’s poor reputation. Although anywhere between 5,000 and 20,000 seiho are recruited every year — exact figures are hard to establish — the horrifically low retention rate means that the current numbers are gradually shrinking, down to 264,000 last year from 350,000 in 1997. The seiho system is unique to domestic Japanese assurers — Prudential Life Japan, a subsidiary of Prudential US, has a male-to-female sales staff ratio of 97:3. Prudential Japan executive Atsushi Kusamoto told Nikkei that “the business environment is getting more difficult for seiho ladies who only sell packaged products”. Domestic assurers, meanwhile, are tying up with banks, once restrictions on sales through that channel are fully lifted at the end of next year. However, domestic assurers still garner between 70% and 85% of life policy sales through the seiho channel.