Insurance companies are moving ahead with their aggressive strategies to capture the market share in the industry. increasing competition and expanding product base of companies have made training programs for insurance personnel a necessity. This article looks at this need and also tries to identify the areas where training is required.

The recent developments in economic front like globalization and liberalization have rekindled Charles Darwin's famous `Survival of the fittest' theory. One has to face the gauntlet thrown to him successfully in order to ensure his position at the place of employment. Under such circumstances, the academic qualifications alone do not suffice the eligibility for being the fittest in an organization. Hence, nowadays it is often observed that a person's academic achievements have very little to do with the job he is engaged in. This observation provides us an inference that the values, strengths and attitudes of a person are ranked ahead of his academic accumulations. The organizations are in search of the determined go-getters with a broad know-how instead of the specialized candidates in a particular area. Leadership and communication are the buzzwords today. Diversified knowledge base is the need of the hour. The candidates who wish to enter a reputed organization need to bear all the hallmarks of a developed personality with desirable levels of the domain knowledge.

This approach may be acceptable without any hiccup if it is product marketing or a commodity-selling job. But, one cannot afford to neglect certain very specialized areas like insurance or banking sector. It is observed that these sectors are also accepting candidates with any background but preferably an MBA, with sound communication and negotiating skills. Such an approach to recruitment leads to the need of training the employees of an organization. Sometimes the employees are well-versed with the technical intricacies of the job, but they fail to convince a customer. This is due to the lack of soft skills. The training programs are a remedy to this problem also. As it is difficult to hunt and grab a person with a combination of the technical intellect and the personality skill sets, `training and development' has assumed enormous significance in the recent years.

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