2010 9 Feb

Selecting An Insurance Agent That Speaks Your Native Tongue

no comment Posted by Music Video

With the creation of large national and global insurance companies invites the concept of cross selling life insurance products to ethnic demographics.

A life insurance company that devotes some of its marketing budget to the development of multi-lingual life insurance agents and relevant language specific life insurance sales material and applications. Not only does the life insurance company have to support its sales effort with multi-lingual materials but also their corporate websites must support the major languages spoken in the United States, namely: Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese , and Korean.

New York Life is one of many leaders in this field of cross-cultural marketing and my favorite life insurance company. New York Life’s home corporate website is available in 4 support languages and with their nationwide network of language specific life agents they can service a wider demographic of life insurance consumers. This is an added plus for any life insurance company’s bottom line.

Because of deeper market penetration, insurance companies can provide insurance solutions to people who would otherwise have no means of learning about insurance in general. America is a country of many ethnic groups and languages and the sooner companies not just insurance companies but corporate America as a whole realize this, they may find that they can improve their profitability by marketing in your primary language. Did you know that Spanish is the fastest growing second language spoken in American homes? Did you know that the Spanish speaking market in America represents a consumer buying power of 900 billion dollars in the U.S. and their buying power has been growing at a rate of 8.2% annually [“Hispanic Trending” by Guillermo Tornoe 2004].

The Chinese speaking market in America is also shares interesting dynamic especially in the South West and Western states. All things considered, it should not be too difficult to find an insurance agent or financial advisor that speaks one of the major financial languages; Spanish and Chinese. I would say in my professional experience that Chinese is more prevalent than Spanish as a second language that insurance and financial professionals obtain through self initiative to better serve their markets or are already bilingual in these languages. If you have parents in their 60’s or 70’s and you are helping them shop for life insurance products or retirement planning solutions, and your parents have a low command of English.

It would be wise to find a bilingual professional that has sales materials and applications readily available in Chinese or Spanish. If your parents speak another language, perhaps a dialect of Hindi or maybe Arabic, don’t worry because with large insurance companies like Prudential , AIG or New York Life, these companies can find an agent in your state that can speak your language and educate your parents about their insurance options. Often is the case in my profession, it is the adult children , or second generation that is helping their parents[ the immigrant first generation] find and buy life insurance products. Although the adult children are quite knowledgeable about insurance, it is often the ambiguity of insurance itself that confuses the parents and they need everything explained in their own language to make sense of their situation and options.

Most global insurance companies have applications in Spanish, however Chinese as a paper application for life insurance is not widely available. Most consumers who find bilingual life insurance agents often complete an English paper application for life insurance, however they complete this application with the help of their adult children who speak English or with a sibling who is bilingual. There will come a time in the near distant future where life insurance products will have paper and electronic applications in many diverse support languages.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)


  • Share/Save/Bookmark
Published under Finance | send this post
Tags: , , , ,

No User Responded in " Selecting An Insurance Agent That Speaks Your Native Tongue "

Subscribes To Comments Post Rss or Leave A Trackback To This Post


“The people in the village were real poor, so none of the children had any toys. But this one little boy had gotten an old enema bag and filled it with rocks, and he would go around and whap the other children across the face with it. Man, I think my heart almost broke. Later the boy came up and offered to give me the toy. This was too much! I reached out my hand, but then he ran away. I chased him down and took the enema bag. He cried a little, but that's the way of these people...”
by Jack Handy