Fidelity Life fulfilled their good corporate citizen role by generously hosting the Chinese who were using their contacts at the Life Office Management Association (LOMA) to get a feel for what different insurers are doing in Australia and New Zealand.

Fidelity Life and Happy Life could hardly be more different: Happy sells traditional policies (whole of life) through 22 provincial offices in China with a sales force of about 1,000 agents supervised from each of those offices: that's right - about 22,000 agents. Their total staff (not counting agents) is about 1,400. They have been in business a similar length of time to Fidelity, and have seen incredible changes from a command economy to a far more open one. Actually - in that respect they are similar to Fidelity!

The big difference though is their agent network. In China being an agent is often a small at-home business. An adjunct for many to other kinds of work - a part-time role - think about the way some people participate in party plan selling, or selling make-up, here in New Zealand.

The idea of full-time, full-service, financial advisers is still relatively new. The revolution is one worth remembering - because once upon a time it was a revolution here, too. The long-run theme here is efficiency. A full time adviser is more efficient than a clutch of part-timers. It also runs that a collection of advisers organised in a financial advisory business may be a lot more efficient than lots of individuals. That's what's been happening with the continuing emergence of dealers, aggregators, and bancassurers.