Tao XuChief Human Resources Officer · Essays & perspective
Agency recruitment5 min read
An honest account of an insurer's workforce
Chinese life insurers recruited agents the way they once sold policies, with an optimistic illustration and a start-of-year push. Before anyone signs an agency contract, they should see the real income distribution of agents in their second year.
I believe the most important document a life insurer gives a prospective agent is not the contract or the commission schedule but an honest account of what people like them have earned. My position is specific. Before anyone in China signs an agency contract with an insurer, they should be shown the distribution of monthly income for agents in their thirteenth to twenty-fourth months with that company, including the median and the lowest quarter, and the share of each recent intake still active a year after joining. At Songbai we have done this since 2022. It has reduced the number of people who join, and I think it is the most useful thing we have done for the conduct of our sales force.
I judge a people decision at an insurer by whether it makes the truth easier to tell: to a recruit about what agents really earn, to a supervisor about calls that were never made, to a board about who could run a province next year. Much of the damage I have seen in life insurance began as a number someone was rewarded for not questioning. My work is to remove those rewards and to accept the smaller, slower figures that follow.
Forced distribution with bottom elimination remains common in Chinese financial companies. Whatever its merits elsewhere, it should never be applied to people whose job is to find and report problems, because it teaches them that accurate reporting is a risk to their careers.
Long-serving provincial general managers bring knowledge and relationships an insurer values. They also accumulate arrangements nobody else understands. A fixed tenure limit, with honest support for the families who move, protects both the branch and the leader.
Individual agents
68,500
June 2026; contracted rather than employed; 231,000 at end-2019
Salaried employees
21,300
Head office and 27 provincial branches, June 2026
Thirteen-month retention of new agents
31%
2024 intake, up from 9% in 2021
I want an insurer's people figures to describe the work honestly, so I have spent six years replacing a swollen agency, a forced curve and comfortable branch tenures with smaller numbers that are true.
I am assistant president and chief human resources officer of Songbai Life Insurance Company Limited, a life insurer listed in Hong Kong and headquartered in Shanghai, with 27 provincial branches. I am responsible for 21,300 salaried colleagues and RMB 5.1 billion of annual staff compensation and benefits. With the head of our individual agency channel I also set selection and training standards for 68,500 agents, who hold agency contracts rather than employment contracts and whose commissions sit outside my budget. I report to our president and prepare papers for the board's remuneration and nomination committees.
My career began in 1994 as a statistician in the Anhui branch of Dongyuan Life, a state-owned national insurer. Two years later the branch launched an individual agency force and I was asked to count it. That led to running agent training in Anhui, then HR for the Sichuan branch, then agency talent at Dongyuan's head office in Beijing. I spent five years as head of HR at Brennmark Xinghe Life, a Sino-foreign joint venture in Guangzhou, before joining Songbai in March 2020, just as the agency model that had shaped my working life began to shrink across the industry.
The questions I work on follow from that history. What should an insurer tell a person before they sign an agency contract? How should it judge the people whose job is to check that sales were honest? Where will its actuaries and data specialists come from when every competitor wants the same few? And how long should anyone run a provincial branch before the branch starts to run on them? My answers have reduced our reported headcount and some premium, and they have cost me arguments with colleagues I respect.
An agency chosen rather than recruited
From 2022 we ended the allowance-led recruitment drive and selected agents through a paid preparation course and an assessment. Thirteen-month retention of new agents rose from 9% to 31%, and average monthly first-year premium per active agent rose from RMB 5,300 to RMB 15,800.
No forced curve for the people who check
After falsified return-visit calls surfaced in 2021, we removed forced ranking for 4,700 staff in verification and control roles. Independent sampling of genuine policyholder contact rose from 83% to 98%, at an added cost of RMB 41 million a year.
Actuaries grown rather than bought
Instead of hiring twenty qualified actuaries at market premiums, we hired six and built a study and rotation programme. Qualified actuaries rose from 22 to 39 between 2022 and 2026, and voluntary attrition in the function fell from 18% to 7%.
Branch leaders who have worked in two provinces
A six-year limit on a general manager's tenure in one province, introduced in 2023, has moved ten leaders. Expense findings in the rotated branches fell from 7.6 to 2.2 per audit; four general managers chose to leave instead.
Current focus
I am building a career path for the agency team leaders who remain after the contraction, many of whom earned their incomes from recruiting and must now earn them from coaching and selling. I am also preparing our 2027 graduate intake for actuarial, data and claims roles, and a second round of branch rotations timed around the school year.
Conversations I welcome
I am not seeking another executive role. I would consider one independent non-executive directorship outside financial services, preferably on a remuneration or nomination committee, subject to Songbai's approval and a conflict review. I also accept a few advisory and speaking conversations a year.
Beyond the page
The record behind the perspective.
In the boardroom
Qiaolin Vocational Education FoundationDirector; chair of the scholarship committee · June 2021–present
Formation
Bachelor of Science in statisticsFenghe University · 1994
Master of Business Administration (part-time)Xiyuan Business School · 2011
When the agency plan came to the board in 2021, Tao gave us the cohort figures and the head of agency's objection in the same paper. We approved a change that made the next two years' numbers look worse, and we knew exactly why we were doing it.
Winifred LeungIndependent non-executive director and chair of the remuneration committee, Songbai Life Insurance Company LimitedThe full record ↗
Contact
I am not seeking another executive role. I would consider one independent non-executive directorship outside financial services, preferably on a remuneration or nomination committee, subject to Songbai's approval and a conflict review. I also accept a few advisory and speaking conversations a year.