By Oh Young-jin
Selling insurance is a tough job.
Selling it to people of a different country, needless to say, is even tougher.
So it’s safe to assume that many have tried but only a handful have survived and prospered in the global insurance market.
A shining example is ING Life Korea.
Its CEO John Wylie can explain the firm’s story of survival and success.
Wylie’s words may give a clue or two for Korean insurance firms seeking to expand overseas, the only way out of the saturated domestic market.
Basically, the Australian executive says that there’s no magic bullet and that it all comes down to patience and commitment, both at the level of individual employees and the company as a whole.
For instance, behind ING’s global success is the firm’s more than 160 years of history. Likewise in Korea, ING Korea has taken 22 years to take root, according to Wylie.
He said that ING has no plans to leave Korea because the country is an important market for ING and is ready to deepen its relationship with, for instance, KB Financial.
Wylie’s rebuttal reflects conventional belief that financial businesses in general and insurance in particular are conducted on the basis of mutual trust and take significant time to get established so people in this business take them very seriously, once relationships are formed. Wylie, however, alluded to an upcoming change with KB. He observed that it will be hard to tell how ING-KB relations will change over the next five to 10 years, but that it has been extremely cordial for the past decade.
Wylie’s path into the insurance business shows it’s definitely for people with patience and commitment. He excelled in mathematics, deciding early on to become an actuary. While working for a local insurance firm in Australia he was picked up by ING and has remained there since.
Wylie can prove very cautious, fitting the image of your ideal insurance agent.
Asked what he thinks about the difficulty Lone Star has faced selling its stake in the Korea Exchange Bank, he declined to comment. He said that he didn’t have enough knowledge about it.
About the long-running strike by the union of SC First Bank in protest of a merit-based pay system, he concluded that each firm and nation has to find the best solution for their situation. He qualified it, however, by adding that meritocracy is an inevitable part of capitalism.