‘Right now, people are not very enthusiastic about savings’

So are there things that you have adopted from them?

We have taken a number of their best practices, mostly in the distribution and customer service area. One of them is a new distribution format called ‘Face to Face’, which is a replication of Nippon Life’s agency model.

Under this, we have currently employed 200 women employee advisors in seven cities. Aged between 30 and 40, these women are graduates and have undergone a training of 30 days. Their performance will not be measured on how many policies they have sold but on how many activities they have done, customers met, service requests taken up and completed and how many policies sold. Nippon Life has around 50,000 women working under this model in Japan. We have begun with 200 women but it will grow in the coming months.