Factors Influencing Agents Retention In Insurance Industry: A Survey Of Selected Insurance Companies In Nairobi (Kenya).

Abstract

Life insurance industry has been suffering for a long time now from high rate of turnover of the agents. Therefore this study was intended to establish the factors that are influencing agents’ retention within the major insurance companies in Nairobi. The study focused on the selected assurance companies in Nairobi on the bases of the volume of business reported in the three selected companies as opposed to the small volume of business which is reported weekly by the up country agencies of the same companies.

The study focused on the three major life assurance companies in Kenya following the AKI 2011 insurance companies positioning. The study concentrated on British America Investment Company founded in 1920, Pan Africa life assurance founded in 1945 and CFC life founded in 1964 as ALICO (American Life Insurance Company).

 

The Main objective of this study was to establish the factors influencing agents’ retention in the insurance industry with great emphases on Life insurance. The study was guided by six specific objectives, namely the social demographics influence, influence of product knowledge, the influence of working conditions, influence of resourcing strategies, influence remuneration mode and the influence of training and development. The study used a descriptive survey design. The study employed descriptive analysis technique on both primary and secondary data. To collect primary data, a set of questionnaires were administered to the agents from the selected major insurance companies in Nairobi. The target population of study was the agents working in the agencies of BRITAK, Pan Africa Life and CFC Life Assurance Company in Nairobi. The sample population for the study consisted of 129 respondents selected from the target population of 1000 possible respondents using stratified random sampling. The data was collected using the drop and pick method. The respondents filled the questionnaires at their convenient time. The study employed descriptive analysis technique on both primary and secondary data.

 

From the findings, the study established that, use of commissions as a mode of remunerating agents, working conditions does not influence retention of agents negatively however training and development, social demographic, product knowledge and resourcing strategies were found out to be key factors influencing the retention of agents negatively. The study therefore recommends that for the insurance industries use more resources in training and developing their agents and also improve on the resourcing strategies.