The impact of a designation program completion on productivity and retention in the life and health insurance industry

With 68% of agents terminating from an insurance sales career within the first two years, the cost of a high turnover rate of sales personnel in the life and health insurance industry is a critical issue to insurance companies, their agents, and the general public. The purpose of the study was to discover whether an improvement in retention of sales agents could be achieved by identifying the productivity and retention impact of designation program completion. A designation program is a course or series of courses that certifies the student has demonstrated a minimum level of knowledge on a given subject. The research questions addressed the relationship between retention and/or productivity and the completion of designation programs, the comparison of the impact between designation programs, and the comparison of the impact between single- or multi-course designation programs. Employing quantitative survival and hazard analysis techniques in comparing the retention rate of all insurance agents against a subset of designation completers, retention impact was significant using paired differences analysis and differences in population means with no significant difference between designation programs studied. Production comparisons based on a pre/post designation completion were measured by looking at differences in percentage productivity. The tests used included population means, Wilcoxon's signed rank analysis, Mann Whitney U test, paired differences analysis and Pearson's R with the results showing limited significance. Implications for social change include the enhanced opportunities for insurance agents to improve their prospect of success, the ability of insurance companies to more efficiently minimize the high expense related to turnover, and the increased value to the public of acquiring more tenured agents who would likely provide more knowledgeable advice.