For the moment, the number of authorised agents has ceased to rise because authorisation of the sales force has finished.
The figure of 251,000 sales agents means that 2.8% of Romania's total employed population (around 9 million people, according to data from the National Statistics Institute) also sell private pensions.
Private pension brokers and authorised intermediaries (particularly banks) account for 31%, almost one third of the sales force on this market. At the same time, private pension managers (including own brokers) account for 69% of marketing agents on the market.
ING, with almost 44,000 agents, boasts the largest sales force. In second place is Aviva, which sells through its own broker, AAV Broker (part of Aviva group), with 33,000 agents. In third position is Allianz-Tiriac, with over 25,000 agents. Other managers with their own significant sales forces are Interamerican (over 15,000), Omniasig (over 14,000), Generali (almost 12,000) and AIG (over 9,000).
In comparison, the biggest pension broker on the market, Brokerpool Cluj, has more than 25,000 agents, slightly more than Allianz-Tiriac.
Second is FinCoP, with a sales force of almost 13,000 agents, while in third place is Salve Club Broker, with over 11,000 agents. Six of the 18 managers and 3 of the 47 private pension brokers have sales forces with above 10,000 agents.
Brokers estimate their agents will attract at least a third of the number of customers that are registered on pillar II in the initial sales campaign. In other words, because they have a third of the sales force on the market, but hope to attract more than a third of the total number of customers, brokers count on their agents' boasting even higher productivity compared with management companies' own sales forces.
Banks have also joined the race for mandatory pensions, and not only the seven that set up management firms.
Another seven banks are making use of their advantages to distribute private pensions. Practically, one third of lending institutions that operate domestically are involved in the distribution of these products.
However, lending institutions count on a passive sales strategy, whereas management companies set up by insurers have an active sales strategy.
The first three reports indicated that over 1.8 million customers had already joined a mandatory pension fund. It remains to be seen whether the market's growth rate has registered equally rapid results over the last two weeks. The figures will be published on Friday, after the fourth bimonthly report.
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