While the Bulgarian insurance market experiences temporary confusion owing to the economic crisis and the low trust of clientele, Matteo Pederzoli, regional director of The Premier Association of Financial Professionals (MDRT), compared the crisis to a watershed that will divide the professionals from the amateurs.

Pederzoli was one of the participants at an October 15 Million Dollar Round Table seminar held at Park Hotel Moskva in Sofia. Allianz Life Bulgaria and 300 other life insurance agents hosted the event.

The seminar opened with the yearning for a formula on how to cope with the recent pressures in Bulgaria's life insurance market, which experienced a healthy growth of 24 per cent between January and August 2008 according to MDTR data. Bulgarian life insurance agents began to operate just two decades ago and theirs is still a relatively young market.

"The word crisis sounds like hypnosis in today's the media but it will only act as a disinfectant in the industry," Pederzoli told Bulgarian life insurance agents.

One of these agents, Monika Karakocheva from Varna, who was the first Bulgarian to join the Million Dollar Round Table, and is now the MDRT representative, said that buying an endowment policy was one of the best ways to invest one's money and that people from their late thirties on have started looking at a long-term financial horizon.

According to her, there was no risk that one's investment would be lost in the inflation, since all life policies were sold in euro. What was more, there were tax breaks with this financial arrangement and the law required endowment money to be invested in low risk securities and bank deposits.
According to MDRT, the life insurance market in Bulgaria has not come to a halt, in contrast to the independent pension funds market, which is subject to rapid economic mood swings and many clients suffering as a result.

The Bulgarian client is between 35 and 50 years old and buys policies from 300 to 600 euro Karakocheva described the profile and noted that the average monthly investment was about 100 leva. In selling any kind of product, the seller always has the clients' indecisiveness to fight against.

"Clients don't need to be told what they need, they need to tell you what they want, so you can advise them," Tony Gordon, former MDRT president, said.
"Many of our clients are nervous and scared, they don't know what to do, markets go up, markets go down, clients cry out for help. The role of the financial adviser is to listen and ask what the client needs. Selling life insurance is not about closing a deal, it is about opening a relationship."

Pederzoli also revealed his selling strategy. "If you work properly in this business, you have only three competitors: death, disability and disease. If you reach your client before any of the three Ds, you should not worry about the insurance agency down the road, about the economic confusion or question your own abilities."
Furthermore, Pederzoli said that, as in every other business, personal initiative was a key factor in being successful. "Information is everywhere now and finance is not about withholding information," he said.

What is MDTR?
Originating in 1927 as a forum dedicated to fostering a high-standard, professional approach to life insurance sales and service, MDRT is a member-driven association, growing in popularity in Central and Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America. In 81 years, MDRT has attracted 41 000 members from 81 countries, with 63 per cent of these not from North America. The basic principle of MDRT is if "I have an idea and you have an idea and we exchange these ideas, we both have two ideas", according to Pederzoli. MDRT has collaborated with more than five major insurance companies in Bulgaria since 2006, with the hope of being a catalyst for a number of developments in the life insurance sector.