"Let's Catch Customers" Kim Yong-beom Ahead of Competitors

Emphasizing Customer Experience TF Collaboration Across All Departments

"Charge Forward Only" Aggressive Management Forecasted Again This Year

[Asia Economy Reporter Oh Hyung-gil] "Our survival and prosperity depend solely on our customers. We must not make the mistake of losing customers by only focusing on competitors."

Kim Yong-beom, Vice Chairman of Meritz Fire & Marine Insurance, announced this year's management goal to focus on customers. He plans to accelerate the path to success created last year by being the only one among the top five non-life insurance companies to record increases in both sales and net profit.

According to the insurance industry on the 15th, Vice Chairman Kim recently sent a CEO message to employees, urging them to "accelerate customer focus and for all departments to collaborate fully with the 'Customer Experience TF (task force)'." The Customer Experience TF, established last year under Kim's direction, aims to improve systems to enhance customer satisfaction, including field sales agents.

He also presented three core tasks: 'extreme rationalism, all-out charge, and extreme cost reduction,' signaling aggressive management again this year.

He evaluated last year's management performance positively. Vice Chairman Kim said, "Our market share in the life insurance sector is 21.8%, ranking second in the industry, with only a 0.5 percentage point gap from first place Samsung," and emphasized, "Our automobile loss ratio is 80.8%, the best in the industry, and our investment yield, excluding bond sales, is 3.66%, overwhelmingly first place." He added, "Meritz Fire & Marine Insurance's investment yield last year was 3.66% (excluding bond sales), ranking first in the industry," and noted, "Although our asset management scale is inferior to other non-life insurers, our yield is overwhelmingly higher."

Since becoming vice chairman in 2017, he has brought a new breeze to the non-life insurance industry. He is showing strong performance by reducing the proportion of automobile insurance and focusing on long-term insurance sales.

In the executive personnel reshuffle conducted earlier this month, Meritz Fire & Marine Insurance reappointed key executives, including President Kang Young-gu of the Ethics Management Office, President Choi Seok-yoon of Corporate Insurance, and Vice President Kwon Dae-young of the Direct Business Division, choosing stability over change. This is interpreted as a plan to continue the achievements recorded last year.

Expansion of the sales network is also expected to continue. As of September last year, Meritz Fire & Marine Insurance had 22,330 exclusive sales agents, an increase of about 5,600 from January (16,727). It surpassed Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance (19,008) to become the largest in the industry.

Vice Chairman Kim urged, "We will boldly break down practices that hinder communication within and between departments," and emphasized, "We must make company-wide communication more horizontal and vigorous."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.