When Audrey Loh, 26, graduated with her degree in accounting and finance five years ago, she was given a grim piece of advice.
“I had a cousin who was in accounting, and she told me to be prepared to never see sunrise or sunset,” said Audrey. “You go to work early in the morning, and you leave late at night. That’s what the job is like.”
But as a girl who admits to being “very shy”, she didn’t feel she had too many options. She had always thought she’d end up doing auditing like all her classmates.
That was until she decided to try doing something completely our of her comfort zone – being an insurance agent.
“I never thought I could do a sales job,” she said. “I was always very shy in college. I would do my level best to stay in the background, to avoid attracting any attention.”
A family friend working as an agent with Prudential provided her the opportunity to try her hand at the job, offering to act as her mentor in the industry.
Audrey’s parents, however, didn’t like the idea.
“They weren’t agreeable, but they respected my decision. I told them to give me one year, and I would show them I can do well and make them proud,” she said.
Within a year, having undergone a variety of product training and character building programmes to help bring her out of her shell, Audrey was transformed into a confident salesperson.
“We receive a lot of structured training, which has helped me become who I am today. In fact, I’m still learning today!” she said.
Audrey was doing so well that she was recognised as a “Premier Wealth Planner” in a newspaper advertisement after just a year on the job.
When Audrey’s father saw the advertisement, he was finally convinced that she had made the right choice.
“My dad now supports me all the way. After he saw the ad, he told all his friends to call me if they needed any insurance or investments,” she said.
But Audrey’s success didn’t just happen. She says becoming a successful young insurance agent at her age requires a lot of self-discipline, and a good attitude and willingness to learn from the various training programmes offered by the company.
“The sky’s the limit,” she said, when asked about the financial rewards of the insurance industry. “If you are willing to challenge yourself all the time, to see how far you can go, the sky’s the limit.”
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