Mother, son spotlighted as Samsung's insurance sales agents

By Yoon Ja-young

How many Koreans would be glad if their son or daughter followed in their footsteps? Only those who take pride in what they do would advise their children to choose the same career path. There are several such cases at Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance, the country’s biggest non-life insurance company.

Lee Jeom-nam, a risk consultant at Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance (Samsung Fire), is one of them.

She admits she didn’t expect her second son, Cho Don-myeong, to join Samsung Fire as a risk adviser. “I could see that my son had made a firm resolution to himself. I decided to trust him,” she said, adding that it made her take more pride in herself.

“I have been doing this job for the past 20 years,” she said. “I was proud to see that I was a positive role model for my son.”

Lee has been building up a successful career in insurance sales, winning numerous awards for customer satisfaction over her two decades there.

Since she has already built a huge pool of clients, some might think she would hand over some of her customers to her son. But she has never done that. Instead, she gives her son thorough advice about insurance sales, from A to Z. “I hope he can build up his own expertise piece by piece,” she said.

The insurer has a job inheritance system, where the customers and insurance policies of excellent consultants are taken over by their children when they retire.

“I want to see my name included in the list of customer satisfaction awardees next year, together with my mother,” Cho said. “Just like my mom who has always been trusted by customers, I will continue doing the best for the financial planning of my customers.”