JAMAICA - Finance
Financial Thinking for Life
Executive Vice President, Sagicor Life
Bio
Mark Chisholm is Executive Vice President in the Sales-Individual Life Division. He joined Sagicor Life Jamaica Limited in 1989 as a clerk and has served in various departments within the company. He has direct responsibility for sales in Jamaica and Sagicor Life of the Cayman Islands. He currently lectures at the University of the West Indies. He holds a post degree diploma in marketing and sales from the University of the West Indies, a diploma in marketing from the University of New Orleans (UNO), and an MBA with distinction.
What is Sagicor’s position in the life insurance market and its unique selling proposition?
Sagicor Life is the leading provider of life and health insurance in the Jamaican Landscape, with 60% market share as of October 2017. Our unique selling proposition is to have well-trained sales and administrative teams that embody our values, which is to offer wise financial thinking for life.
What are some of the challenges and opportunities in your sector, and how do you plan to grow in the coming years?
Some of the challenges include the regulatory environment, such as increased scrutiny and industry regulations; new and aggressive competition and microinsurance strategies; the pricing of products by competitors to facilitate the base of the pyramid market; and mergers and acquisitions, which open up our company to market share raids. In terms of the opportunities, there is advanced technology, which will aid in driving down business processing cost, improve efficiency, and leverage our database to allow for increase in cross-sell and upsell opportunities. In addition, there are new and additional distribution channels such as new market segments and product development due to clients’ demographics and psychographics as well as product diversity in terms of designing new and innovative products to fit changing lifestyles.
How do you plan to increase insurance penetration in Jamaica and expand your reach to more costumers?
We seek to increase and improve insurance and pension penetration through public education financial inclusion targeted at the base of the pyramid and increase access to financial products and services through varying distribution channels such as online distribution and sales, for example.
What are your goals and objectives for 2018?
Some of the business’ goals and objectives are to diversify and transform our sales and distribution channels, improve service standards by the use of technology and various touch points, infuse innovation and technology, and more R&D to provide clients with different channels and product designs.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
