As a young insurance adviser in the 1980s, Mark O'Dell grappled with what many advisers still struggle with today - the fear of rejection. After all, he had dropped out of college and his friends then were just like him - young with little savings, which meant that they were not good sales prospects.
He became so disheartened that he quit his insurance sales job once - or at least tried to. 'I didn't automatically take to insurance sales. Many salespeople or advisers face challenges with reluctance. I had 'call' reluctance - the fear of calling someone and getting rejected.
'In sales you have to generate your own prospects, give people a reason to see you. It's very much a momentum game. When your prospects run down and you have fewer to call on, it gets harder. I was reaching one of those low points. I thought - I have to find something else to do - this isn't for me.'
Today, Mr O'Dell is executive vice-president and general manager of AIA, which boasts one million individual customers and 2.6 million active policies. While not having a university degree is 'a bit of a regret', he has earned a number of professional qualifications along the way - Chartered Financial Consultant, Chartered Life Underwriter and Registered Financial Consultant. In 2006, he was named 'Insurance Personality of the Year' by the Asia Insurance Review.
An avid golfer and current president of the Life Insurance Association and the Financial Planning Association of Singapore, he has brought a warmer and more personable face to AIA. Now into his fourth year as country head, he may well be the longest-serving foreign general manager here.
Yet, Mr O'Dell's beginnings were humble. A child of divorced parents, he finished high school a year early to go to college, working his way and studying at the same time. 'I wasn't exactly poor but I had to pay my own way,' he says. 'I was working 30-35 hours a week, I'd leave college and hitchhike to my job. I worked in a garage changing tyres at one time. I got impatient and wanted to make money.'
A blind advertisement turned out to be one for life insurance sales. So he decided to leave college to pursue a sales career - his father had been in life insurance. 'The prospects of a selling career were quite interesting,' he recalls. 'You're paid for results and are not limited by education.'
Promising start
He started as an agent with Prudential and fairly quickly set some territorial records for new sales. 'Those were pretty scary days,' he remembers. 'It meant calling on people. All my friends were like me, 22 years old with no money. So you had to learn how to get referrals to people who needed the solutions you were proposing. You had to call a lot more people.
'I was lucky in one regard, I was the first new hire of a new sales manager. She did everything the company told her she should do, and I listened to everything she told me I should do. I was too scared to do anything else. If anything, at least the system was pretty good.'
But the initial euphoria of making 57 sales in the first three months petered out. He hit a rough, dry patch and quit - but was persuaded to stay on by colleagues. 'I had to buckle down, face my reluctance and get on with it,' he says.
Less than two years later, at 24, he was made supervisor. All his recruits then were older than him. He worked six days a week, 12 hours a day. 'It was very hard work. No matter where you are, the hardest job is that of the frontline manager who works with new, inexperienced advisers.'
Twelve years later, AIG's knock on his door in 1993 through a headhunter - to consider a posting in Singapore or Thailand - took him completely by surprise. 'Americans are very sheltered,' he says. 'I didn't even have a passport. But the proposition sounded so intriguing that I went to the interview.'
The decision, he says, was fairly easy. And it marked a turning point in his life. As he pondered the choices then, he recalled a talk by a minister, Anthony Campolo, who had done some research on elderly people. These people were asked what they would do differently if they had the chance to relive their life.
Among the major observations: Those who took more risks in life seemed to have found it more satisfying. And those that did things that were meaningful beyond their lifetime also felt satisfied.
'It was the part about taking risk that struck me,' says Mr O'Dell. 'I thought that if I didn't take the opportunity to come to Asia - in this case, Singapore, I'd probably regret it for the rest of my life. If I took the opportunity and it didn't work out, I wouldn't be dissatisfied for taking that risk.'
He came to Singapore first in 1994, as director of agency. After 20 months, he was posted to Indonesia, where he grappled with his first culture shock.
'You go to Jakarta and the traffic and noise, the way things get done or don't get done, hit you. It was the first time I faced a significant language barrier.' But he picked up Bahasa and by the time the Asian financial crisis struck in 1997, he had become general manager.
The crisis, he says, was 'amazingly challenging'. 'When the rupiah's value plunged, for a while we had more surrenders than new business. Especially with US-dollar policies. Some customers were trying to take advantage of the dollar's appreciation and they cashed out.'
But with the perseverance that marked him even in his days as a rookie, Mr O'Dell hunkered down. At a time when gloom was palpable, AIA embarked on its biggest expansion. Sales offices mushroomed from six to 32 and agents from 600 to 2,500.
In 2000, Mr O'Dell was posted to Malaysia as general manager, where about two years later, the firm faced its own 'critical year' crisis that had rocked Singapore. The crisis was sparked when policyholders woke up to the fact that their policies' critical year - the point at which they need not pay any premiums - had been delayed by several years due to poor investment returns.
While Singapore had to cope with a question of mis-selling, as benefit illustrations were not standardised, Mr O'Dell says, the Malaysian situation was different. 'We never had that problem of inconsistent illustrations. Everything was company-produced and standard from the mid-1980s, so we did not nearly have the same degree of potential unintentional misrepresentation. But we still had policyholder expectations to deal with - and that was tricky.'
By the time he was posted again to Singapore in 2004, the solutions for the critical year crisis had been hammered out. While painful, that crisis was symptomatic of a coming-of-age of sorts among policyholders, who woke up to a growing realisation that insurance policies may not make the best savings vehicles.
More understanding needed
'In Asia, the whole industry was built on the savings proposition, supported by a long-term value proposition of returns over 20 years,' says Mr O'Dell. 'Going back to the 1980s and early 1990s, there was enough of a gap between short and long-term returns, and a lack of alternatives for customers to put their money in. You could survive very well and even prosper on some products.
'But then, as capital markets developed, other choices came in and returns went down. In the past three years with hardly any yield curve, it was much more difficult to sell a product, yet it still has value. People need to understand the need for protection, long-term savings and the need to diversify their savings among products, unit trusts and term assurance.'
The challenge of making people aware of their needs - and convincing them of AIA's value proposition - is perhaps most clearly seen in the group's Financial Health Check Academy, set up last year. (see accompanying story)
Today, Mr O'Dell welcomes recruits who do not have a university degree. 'A young person in any job has to be serious, ready and suitable,' he says. 'A financial adviser or agent is still a career that is open to anyone with a minimum education level, with a willingness to work with people and a desire to make something of themselves.'
A career as an adviser is under-rated, he says. And a tough way to make a living. 'But if you take the view that you are serving people, a funny thing happens. First, you're going to be more successful in your business. I believe this with all my heart and soul. Second, you'll get a lot more satisfaction. If you look at it as a sales job, it's damn tough.'
An experience that bears this out is a claim by the family of a client who suddenly suffered a heart attack and died. He had taken up 'significant' life cover 19 months before his death.
'That claim stood out for me,' says Mr O'Dell. 'They were a young couple in their 30s. As these things happen, he had a heart attack while mowing his lawn and died. But it wasn't just the death claim. The widow relied on me and I was happy to give her advice on so many things to get her through that period. Those things really make you feel pretty satisfied that what you do is worthwhile.'
This article was first published in The Business Times on September 13, 2008.
