Ceylinco Life ends 2020 with near-perfect gender balance in sales force

 Members of Ceylinco Life's Nelliady Branch, which is headed by a woman and where the majority of the sales force is female

•  Women now constitute 49.1% of the life insurance leaders' 4,300-person sales team once dominated by men

As the world celebrates International Women’s Day on 8 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% of its 4,300 strong sales team. 

The significance of this achievement is underlined by the fact that women made up only 32% 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% of Ceylinco Life’s Sales Consultants, 30.9% of Sales Supervisors and 10.4% of all Heads of Branches are women, the company disclosed.

Commenting on this achievement, Ceylinco Life Managing Director 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% 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 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.