As an ex-Police Officer who responded to crimes and unnatural deaths coupled with her experience growing up in a single-parent family, Joyce has an unwavering conviction to help people plan right by themselves and by their families.

In an incident that left a deep impression on her, she witnessed the suicide of a middle-aged father who decided to take his life as he did not have sufficient funds to treat his cancer and he did not want to burden his children. At that point, she knew it was no longer sufficient to help people reactively. She desired to help people preventively. She joined the financial services industry in April 2018. Her sole purpose was to reach out to as many people as possible in order to help them analyse their financial portfolios, so they can have options when faced with unforeseen circumstances.

By 2019, her business was 100% driven by social media, passive referrals and warm leads. To add value to her clients and the general public, she has been consistently pushing out digital content on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and videos, to ensure that more people understand what insurance is about. She approaches business with a clientcentric approach and develops a digitised system to conduct meaningful financial reviews.

She is strongly motivated to give back to the industry by setting aside time to help her fellow consultants succeed. She regularly shares with fellow practitioners in one-to-one sessions and at agency, company and industry events. She was also involved in multiple company-level discussions on driving ethics and the MDRT whole person concept to the agency force.

Joyce contributes to society by trekking to the villages in the mountains of Nepal to donate necessities and helps out with the schools and orphanages there. She first encountered these villages while training with the Gurkhas in Nepal as part of her senior police officer course.

Joyce achieved her first MDRT in less than eight months and her other achievements include being appointed MDRT ambassador, mentor and digital influencer in her company to advocate the use of technology.

Lahiru is a dynamic agency team leader who stepped into the leadership role in 2017. He has built what started off as a team of five to 50 members in a short span of two years. Despite the curve balls that were thrown his way, from economic fluctuations to political instabilities in the country, Lahiru and his team have defied the odds and come out on top. In 2019, his team recorded the highest Annualized New Business Premium in the company and the industry.

He believes that “You are only as good as your team” and inspires his team to go the distance. He personally conducts training programmes outside of the regular company sessions, broadening their expertise in sales pitching and conducting role plays to improve their communication and negotiation skills. He has banded together several top performers and senior members to act as mentors for the new comers, thereby ensuring that a learning culture prevails among the team at all times. Under his guidance, two members from his team successfully made it to Million Dollar Round Table in 2019.

Lahiru’s long list of achievements in 2019 include having completed the MDRT Life membership in 2019; achieved Court of the Table recognition for the fourth time; awarded the Best Territorial Manager 2019 at the Softlogic Life Annual Awards; and won the Softlogic Life Platinum Award for Top Individual - New Business Performers in 2019, the Platinum Award for Team Management - New Business Performers in 2019, and the LIMRA Management Award in 2019. He has been appointed as the area chair in the 2020 MDRT Membership Communications Committee.

He has a master of business administration from Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK and completed a post graduate diploma in marketing from Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing.

Balancing work, he has volunteered in activities including children’s education, donations to schools in rural Sri Lanka and the Reforestation and Plantation Society in Sri Lanka.

He believes that being on a journey as a team has much more value, and strives to do right and what is best for every team member’s growth.

At the age of only 25, Wilfred has been a financial consultant for two and a half years. Within this short time frame, he has qualified for the Million Dollar Round Table, as well as the International Dragon Award in 2018. On top of clinching both prestigious awards, he is also a Triple convention qualifier, all of which he attained while still studying full-time at the Nanyang Technological University.

As a maritime studies undergraduate, he considered pursuing a career in the maritime industry or as an engineer. But he decided to change course to pursue a career in financial advisory because it allows him to continue learning. He also loves interacting with people from all walks of life, deriving his energy from listening to their stories. He finds great purpose in helping clients who have placed their trust in him to secure their future and protect their wellbeing and income, as well as grow their wealth for the long-term.

To add value, he periodically updates his clients about the financial markets. He has also developed a unique catalogue called the Dreams Menu, which allows his clients to choose their dream house, car and lifestyle. This helps them visualise their future financial goals coming to life, learn where their gaps are, and how he can help them achieve their aspirations.

With the aim to help young millennials and aspirants to better understand financial planning, he also launched a book titled “University Graduates’ Adulting Starter Pack”. He has also visited campuses to share with the undergraduates about the key actionable steps of financial planning. To further help educate people about financial planning, he came up with a broadcast and mailing list called #WeeklyWilly, where he shares about financial news and insights with clients, friends and family members on a weekly basis.

His motivation is derived from wanting to make his parents proud, to represent his company and organisation on the international stage, and from his own personal belief that life should be a journey of perpetual progress and growth.

Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) and Manulife Vietnam came together by signing an exclusive longterm bancassurance agreement in September 2015. Since then, the partnership has achieved tremendous success. It is now one of the biggest and most successful bancassurance partnerships in Vietnam’s life insurance industry.

The collaboration of the two market leaders, with SCB’s extensive network including 239 banking outlets nationwide and diverse insurance solutions and expertise from Manulife, brought convenience to customers by enabling “all transactions in one destination”.

With the mission of putting customers at the heart of everything they do, SCB and Manulife organised not only various customer seminars and promotions with attractive prizes, but also customer care programs targeted at serving different segments to improve customer experience. The combination of the strengths of both the insurer and the bank brings benefits of the highest quality to more than 40,000 customers of SCB.

Other factors that have contributed to the excellent partnership of the two organisations include the ability to execute and a collaborative mind-set. Management team meetings between the two partners are conducted weekly, testament to the commitment and efforts to develop the partnership from the leadership teams.

Not only is there an alignment in vision among the management teams, Manulife and SCB have ensured that the vision is cascaded throughout the organisations. This has enabled the smooth execution of business strategy from SCB’s headquarter to SCB bank branches.

The results of the successful partnership can also be seen through the sales force’s high engagement scores, the development of a diverse product portfolio tailored to various customer segments and life stages, and the utilisation of technology to enhance bancassurance operation.

In 2019, the partnership continued to bring in remarkable results. Annual premium equivalent (APE) performance achieved a remarkable 71% jump year-on-year, exceeding over 300% of the agreement. The exclusive partnership also protected more than 40,000 customers, a 53% increase compared to 2018.

Wave has been focussing on digital developments with the aim to explore ways to enhance the direction of the development of the industry and promote the standing and well-being of financial planners and clients.

Wave and his team “UTOPIA” have been proactive on social media sharing topics on financial management, across the various platforms of Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Linkedin, WeChat, and Tencent video, generating more than 21,450 subscribers. A total of 901 feeds were published on the various channels in which 211 original articles were written and published on WeChat official account.

To avoid holding physical events during last year’s social protests in Hong Kong, he organised online seminars for highly educated young professionals. Among the numerous posts, articles and videos that were uploaded, “Love 33 Times”, a creative micro-movie introducing the interior design of UTOPIA’s headquarters, impressively generated over 163,500 views online.

Augmented Reality (AR) technology is implemented in the various areas of the office. Visitors can interactively get to know the core values of the team and view eye-catching AR photos and videos.

Determined to establish a new social-networking site of their own to maintain the quality of training and management as the team grew, HK$1.1 million was invested in the development of a customised mobile application named “iU”. It incorporates services such as HR system, e-learning program, e-examination, virtual conferencing, event enrolment, leave application, and even an underwriting search engine and AI assistant, “Xiao Ji”.

Today, the team can retrieve relevant information on underwriting cases immediately when required. When in need of guidelines on handling an objection or enquiry, any team member can seek assistance from “Xiao Ji” or find answers from the over 100 tutorial videos filmed by his team. Also, with the multi-functional “iU” mobile application, the entire training process efficiency has improved tremendously. Now, it only requires five administration staff to manage the team’s affairs, which is a 1:80 staff-agent ratio.

These digital initiatives have not only enhanced the standing of advisers in his team and enabled better service to clients, they have also directly contributed to the outstanding performance of Wave’s team. It achieved sales performance of a 39.79% growth rate, attracted 154 new recruits, and groomed 129 Million Dollar Round Table, Court of the Table and Top of the Table members in spite of all the challenges.

A leading platform for financial advisers, getArrange.com empowers advisers to assist their clients in drafting wills and connecting them with a range of services, and even to show how their life can be affected by events and plans on an interactive chart.

The entire will drafting process right from the filling in of the fact-find form to putting the clauses together is digitised into one combined step. A highly optimised workflow and portable system, the platform is the “Will drafter” that advisers carry around with them anywhere they go.

Founded in 2017, its accomplishments in 2019 include:

• Launch of an adviser centric account for financial advisers to draft wills instantly. It also became the only will writing company in Singapore to not just train financial advisers on wills and trusts knowledge but give them the ability to instantly draft one. This proves valuable as advisers are able to better understand their clients’ situations to plan comprehensively.
• Launch of gA-Vault - a physical will storage solution with an online interface for ease of viewing the deposited will and also for appointing authorised recipients.
• Addition of the instant drafting of testamentary trust at no extra charges. It’s also used to stagger death payouts from insurance.
• Launch of gA-Crystal - An interactive graphical interface for advisers to show how simulated scenarios and purchased policies can affect cash flow and financial well-being.
• Partnering with a medical group so advisers can simply click on a map of over 40 Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) clinics in Singapore to do up Lasting Power of Attorney for their clients.
• Partnering a trust and fiduciary solutions group to extend professional services to financial advisers to serve clients who need solutions including trust, company incorporation, and family offices.

Being able to assist in drafting a will instantly, getArrange.com allows advisers to have truthful and meaningful conversations with their clients, expand referrals and provide quick visual tools to graphically show how events and plans can affect the financial wellbeing of clients, to achieve client-adviser win-win.

Allianz Life Indonesia operates in a country with 270 million people and more than 17,000 islands. While it represents a huge market in size, its sheer size also causes a lot of challenges, challenges that can only be overcome by using advanced technology.

To tap the huge market potential with its low insurance penetration, changing demographics and a tech-savvy emerging middle class, the insurer believes that its strongest partner is its agency force. Hence, the insurer invests heavily into technology and its agents to raise professionalism.

Putting in place a Digital & Agile Transformation program, it created the Allianz Innovation Lab to provide an encouraging environment that invites cross-functional agile teams to try out new ways of working including empowerment, self-organisation, design thinking, and prototyping.

Allianz Life Indonesia launched an agency ecosystem with Allianz Discover, its Digital tablet solution, at the core to provide a seamless experience across all agency activity from education, planning, interaction, selling, tracking to servicing.

With Allianz Discover, it is empowering existing agents while attracting new agents, and at the same time providing a superior experience to customers.

In one tool, agents can choose to follow up on previously provided leads, keep track of daily activities, utilise digital sales materials stored in Allianz Discover’s Media Lounge to support interactions with customers, enable digital payments, and enjoy straight through processing, and more.

This ecosystem supports the company’s vision of a lifelong relationship between agents and customers.

An indicator of the success of how the digital transformation initiative has helped agents in the course of their work is that processing time for a case has improved from some seven days to closing cases on the spot with a processing time as fast as just five minutes.

Other positive impacts include digital submission rate improving from 65% to 92%, and average new business handling time needed improving by 99%.

Ching Lih sees an opportunity in every adversity she faces and believes that all challenges can be overcome if one is determined and filled with purpose.

She joined the insurance industry when she was in dire need of money – with a family loan of RM700,000 on her shoulders for which she was the guarantor. With minimal education background and starting from scratch as an agent, she relied on her drive and determination to help her succeed.

Being diagnosed with cancer about two years ago was another curve ball life threw at her. But she has taken it in stride. “You realise that living a life with purpose is of utmost importance. You cannot predict what will happen the next second, so you live every day like it’s a celebration and realise that life is very beautiful,” she said.

A brush with mortality can make one aware of how precious time is and, therefore, she is determined to use her time to impart the knowledge and to show her agents the ropes in the industry. Having set a sterling example, she continuously reminds her agents that everyone faces adversity, and it is how one deals with challenges which determine success.

Ching Lih, also known as Kelly to her friends, is in her seventh year of MDRT qualification and looks forward to becoming a qualifying and life member in her 10th year. Some of her remarkable achievements and accomplishments include: 3-star million dollar agency; highest production in Sarawak; LIMRA AMTC certified moderator; groomed three MDRT qualifiers in year 2019; and awarded top district manager in AIA Sarawak.

On top of that, she does not forget her responsibility to give back to society. In addition to the monetary donations through her agency, Ching Lih and her team visit old folks homes every Chinese New Year. She also organises workshops and gets teachers to volunteer to teach the less fortunate children as part of their way to give back, amongst other initiatives.

From an uncertain career transition due to debt to battling cancer, her indomitable fighting spirit is an inspiration to everyone around her.

Lachman has been providing professional financial services to more than 1,500 clients in Hong Kong for over 42 years since joining the company in 1978. In the early years between 1978 and 1981, he was one of most productive agents at his company, contributing to 60% of the company’s new sales. He has received countless awards and recognitions over the years of service through changing times.

Today, at the age of 81, he is still very passionate and enjoys every moment being with his clients. His commitment stems from his enduring belief in the value of insurance: savings and protection that are critical to helping individuals grow, families flourish, businesses thrive, and drive positive changes in the community. To him, trust is the bedrock of lifelong client relationships, and is earned only through professionalism, resilience, and care.

Adhering to the highest of standards for clients’ financial wellbeing, he strongly believes that professionalism is an essential quality to bring value to clients. Since the first day of joining the industry, lunch is always reserved for meeting clients. But he will not talk business while having lunch with his clients as he deems that there is insufficient time for a proper and meaningful conversation on financial wellbeing. He prefers designated business meetings, which allow enough time for in-depth and thorough discussions.

While his career started off rough, he adapted quickly and built his area of expertise in general insurance, while looking for every opportunity to master the skills and technique for a conversation on life insurance. He is always open to sharing on his failures with young agents, as it is vital that these challenges are not forgotten.

Having seen poverty at a tender age, he has been helping the unprivileged and giving donations over the years to various organisations. He will also personally go and handover morning breakfast to the old age homes, street sleepers, orphanage children homes, and the needy and unemployed.

Optimism is a happiness magnet. With that belief, he has made many good friends and valuable clients and is proud to say that today his clients are his best friends and the pillars of his success in the industry.

Born with a creative soul, Benny followed his passion to do an undergraduate degree in interior design overseas. But after graduation, he chose to join the insurance industry.

From the first day he entered the Academy in 2013, he set a clear goal to become a district director in five years and he did. He achieved Court of the Table in six months in 2014 and again in 2019, he also qualified for Top of the Table for five consecutive years and won several industrial honours.

With the motto of “Cultivating a career in insurance with passion; leading the district’s elites with a humble heart”, he leads a vibrant team of high-performing members deployed in eight departments, with an average age of 30.

In January 2019, he set another goal to win the Super Grand District of the Year. Faced with many challenges during the year, he and his team managed to overcome the difficulties with perseverance, and achieved outstanding results against the odds.

After obtaining PAL Diamond membership, his team size rose from 188 in 2018 to 286 with an average age of 30. Over 200 of them are Bachelors, Masters, or PHD holders.

In addition, 60 of his team members qualified for MDRT, including six COTs and three TOTs. There were also 36 promotions to mangers and one to District Director.

Benny’s role model is his mother who is an outstanding agency leader herself. She has impressed upon him her unyielding commitment to the profession. With his mother leading by example, he is constantly motivated to work hard and strive for the best. He hopes to outshine his mother, to set high standards for himself and his team, and to never settle for second best.

Benny spends a lot of time understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each team member to help them realise their fullest potential. His goal is to help his team members become District Directors in three years.

He has also provided support to the less privileged.

He believes that the ultimate mission of the insurance profession is to protect the community and serve those in need

From a traditional household in a conservative society to a competitive professional working world and emerging as a winner - Divya has undergone a dazzling transformative journey from a housewife to an internationally acclaimed insurance adviser. Her remarkable transformation has also served as an inspiration to other women looking to make their mark in the world.

Since joining the industry because of emotional and financial turbulence when her father-in-law passed away, she has achieved five Million Dollar Round Table, one Court of the Table and five Top of the Table honours. Her success is a result of her resolute determination and mission to share with as many people as possible on the importance of life insurance.

A consistent top performer, she has continued to reach new heights. Her achievements in 2019 include recording 4.5 times of TOT production, more than doubling her 2018 performance. In the first quarter of 2020, she has already reached TOT production. In 2019, she also won Top Advisor of AIA President Club – the elite club for the top advisers of each AIA market – CEO Award as the Top Advisor in India, and International Quality Award from LIMRA.

Impressively, her incredible results are built on a product mix of 95% protection and a persistency rate of 99.98%, serving over 1,000 clients.

With a heart to give back to the industry, she has served as an ambassador to promote MDRT culture in her company, and has spoken regularly at various industry events, including at the MDRT Annual Meeting in Miami Florida and at MDRT Day in Kuala Lumpur in 2019. She also regularly conducts ‘Hello Divya’ classes nationally for MDRT aspirants, through which she has directly mentored over 1,500 aspiring MDRT members in the last three years.

Setting another record in the industry, she is the first three-time winner of the prestigious Asia Trusted Life Agents & Advisers Awards. She was crowned Insurance Agent of the Year in 2017, Inspirational Agent of the Year in 2018 and, now, Insurance Agent of the Year in 2020.

As a young leader with some 15 years in the insurance industry, Jason’s extraordinary career is highlighted by his extensive exposure in Asia markets particularly in Hong Kong, Singapore and Vietnam.

Under his leadership, his agency team achieved remarkable progress across the board in 2019, despite an extremely challenging operating environment and extended civil unrest in the city.

His extraordinary results can be observed in sales, headcount, quality, recruitment and people. His sales premiums via the agency channel grew by 33% year-on-year to over HK$1,200 million, a record high for the company, outperforming the agency market average growth of 5% in Hong Kong. He also achieved a 5% growth in agency headcount, a record-high manpower of over 2,200, with a focus on quality where one in five of Sun Life Hong Kong’s advisers achieved MDRT. At the corporate level, 16% of his staff were promoted while 25% had expanded job responsibilities. At the agency level, 209 advisers and 76 agency managers were promoted in 2019.

Jason has spearheaded several strategic initiatives over the years to build a stronger agency team – the growth engine of the company – that delivers quality business and drives the company’s medium-to-long term success.

Be inspiring and be open, are qualities he upholds and believes in that are crucial to becoming a strong and successful leader. His multifaceted roles include being a member of Club 2028 of the Hong Kong Federation of Insurers promoting positive industry image and talent development, a member of the Future Task Force of the Insurance Authority of Hong Kong, and a consultant to “Life Insurance”, a commemorative book published by the Hong Kong Federation of Insurers to document the development of the life insurance and to promote financial literacy in Hong Kong.

Leading with vision, passion and innovation, he believes in the “ripple effect” of teamwork and the importance of a shared ambition. He communicates his priorities clearly and openly with his team and other leaders of the agency force and is determined to remove momentum killers by encouraging his team to speak up, which has resulted in an agile team culture and contribution of creative ideas even by junior staff.

Sun Life continues to help its clients achieve lifetime financial security and live healthier lives, building on 127 years of experience and capabilities. Although Hong Kong’s 2019 GDP contracted by 1.2%, Sun Life Hong Kong (SLHK) achieved remarkable growth as its full year sales rose by a record high for the company from 2018.

Putting the priority on health and retirement in 2019, SLHK provides access to quality healthcare services at affordable cost and a carefree retirement with client-centric products to meet the needs of present and future generations. This has resulted in astonishing sales growth as evidenced by the sales of health insurance that witnessed a significant year-on-year increase in the first half of 2019.

With its focus on enhancing client experiences at critical moments with digitisation, My Sun Life HK, an awardwinning app, was among the first in the market to leverage the Faster Payment System (FPS) - an open payment platform developed by the banking regulator in Hong Kong to distribute claim payouts to clients. It was a bold and unprecedented move by SLHK when most merchants at the time opted to utilize the payment system to collect payments instead.

SLHK also saw a bigger and stronger agency team in 2019, primarily attributed to the effective execution of a twinpronged strategy: quality training and quality recruitment. Training platforms Most Respected Advisor (MRA) Academy is instrumental in nurturing all advisers, SEED upskills team leaders through dedicated training on leadership, and the BrighterGen Academy helps recruit newcomers with highpotential and provides them with a fast track to success.

SLHK is bold on advertising and branding to stand out. An example is the collaboration with Manner, a new social media channel in Hong Kong with over one million followers on Facebook. Being an industry-first collaboration, a parody of the famous Three Kingdoms story was created, a video that went viral online in 2019, with more than half a million views from young audiences.

A successful campaign “What if you live up to 120 years old” was also launched that helped boost the performance of health insurance in the first half of 2019, with a year-onyear growth of more than 50% in sales.

As a subsidiary of a Canada-domiciled corporation, SLHK benchmarks itself against the best in the industry and strives to achieve and maintain the highest professional standards.

As the Senior Director of Agency, Rakesh is a key personnel in the company’s agency channel. He has contributed towards strategising, setting and scaling up of the agency business model and is poised to help accelerate growth. Over the last five years, the individual weighted new business premium (IWNBP) collections has grown by 29% CAGR and the number of Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT) qualifiers rose by a remarkable six times. In the last calendar year, the number of MDRT members grew by 27%.

In the last 12 months, he has focussed on expanding the agency network, while ensuring quality agent hiring, higher agent productivity and profitable growth. He was instrumental in converting the agency channel from a high-cost model to a profitable growth-led model as shown by the growth of the agency, enhancing the MDRT culture, training and development, and promoting the adoption of technology.

One such programme in driving the MDRT culture is the “MDRT School” where potential MDRT qualifiers are given additional specialised support and training to help these agents to join the exclusive club.

He also played a significant role in building the Premier Agency model in the company. Premier Agency was a concept introduced in 2015 with the proposition of a “Life Planner”. Life Planners are considered key internal customers who hold the promise to become future MDRT members and leaders.

Advisers go through a stringent selection process and once selected, each premier agent undergoes a three-year structured roadmap strategically charted at important milestones in their journey to build capability. The three core dimensions of the programme are “Personal Empowerment”, “Business Empowerment” and “Domain Expertise”. The Premier Agency now accounts for 75% of the overall agency contribution.

With an emphasis on Ease of Doing Business, notable results and initiatives include 98% of new business submission is now paperless, as well as its “Good Friend” application with features such as MDRT Dashboard, lead management, and testimonial videos.

On successful agency management, he believes that the focus should be on creating positive working relationships. That will not only enable a healthy work atmosphere but also foster trust and productivity. With trust, people are more likely to adhere to necessary changes, resulting in greater innovation and adaptability to focus on opportunities.