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Women now constitute 49.1% of life insurance leader’s 4,300-person sales team once dominated by men
As the world celebrates International Women’s Day on 8th March, Ceylinco Life has announced the achievement of a near perfect ratio in gender balance in its sales force by end 2020, with women representing 49.1 per cent of its 4,300 strong sales team.
The significance of this achievement is underlined by the fact that women made up only 32 per cent of Ceylinco Life’s sales force a decade ago. This remarkable improvement is a testament to Ceylinco Life’s efforts to foster equal opportunities for women in the workplace, to promote professionalism in the industry and to change the stereotypical depiction of the life insurance salesperson, the Company said.
Currently, 58 per cent of Ceylinco Life’s Sales Consultants, 30.9 per cent of Sales Supervisors and 10.4 per cent of all Heads of Branches are women, the Company disclosed.
Commenting on this achievement, Ceylinco Life Managing Director Mr Thushara Ranasinghe said: “Life insurance sales was once a male bastion. Women were under-represented in the insurance industry due to stereotyping of gender roles, underestimating their suitability to sell insurance, and because of the intense interaction with potential customers required to close a sale. At Ceylinco Life we believe in inclusion, and our hiring policy, the training, support, motivation and recognition we offer free of gender bias has resulted in women not just holding their own in our sales team but frequently outperforming the men.”
Of the total number of Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT) qualifiers produced by Ceylinco Life in 2020, 33 per cent are women. The Company has been taking part in the National Sales Congress (NASCO) Awards since 2011 fielding remarkable female winners and won the award for the Most Outstanding Female Sales Person of the Year in 2015 and 2016. In 2019, Ceylinco Life’s Shyamala Delwala won a Gold award in the ‘Other Sales Support’ category, at the Assistant Manager level while K. D. L. N. Inoka won a Silver award in the Executive category, both under the Life Insurance sector of the NASCO Awards.
In other achievements, Ceylinco Life’s Chief Digital Officer Ms Upamalika Ratnayake was the Company’s first Chief Information Officer (CIO) and in 2017 was adjudged CIO of the Year at the first-ever Women in IT Awards (WITA) organised by the Women in IT Association in Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka’s leading life insurer for more than half of the 33 years it has been in existence, and certified as a ‘Great Workplace’ in Sri Lanka by Great Place to Work®, Ceylinco Life was ranked the ‘Most Valuable Life Insurance Brand’ in Sri Lanka by Brand Finance in 2020 and declared the ‘Peoples Life Insurance Service Provider of the Year’ for the 14th consecutive year at the 2020 SLIM-Nielsen Peoples Awards. The Company was named the ‘Best Life Insurer in Sri Lanka’ for the seventh consecutive year by World Finance in 2020, and accorded an ‘Honourable Mention’ as one of the ‘Most Admired Companies in Sri Lanka’ in 2019-20 by the International Chamber of Commerce Sri Lanka (ICCSL) in collaboration with the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), UK.
Ceylinco Life has close to a million lives covered by active policies and is acknowledged as a benchmark in the local insurance sector for innovation, product research and development, customer service, professional development, and corporate social responsibility.
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