Agent’s Competence and Relationship Marketing Capability: A Study of Life Insurance Agents in Indonesia Using a Structural Equation Modelling Approach
Downloads
The life insurance industry in Indonesia continues to grow significantly but faces persistent challenges related to low public trust, largely due to claim disputes and insurance company bankruptcies. Insurance agents play a crucial role as the primary link between companies and customers, where their relational behaviors and professional competence shape customer perceptions and loyalty. This study examined the effects of Customer Relationship Building Behavior (CRBB) and agent competence on customer trust, customer satisfaction, and renewal intention in the Indonesian life insurance industry, with agent competence representing the knowledge, skills, and professional attitudes of insurance agents. A quantitative survey was conducted with 237 life insurance policyholders in the Jabodetabek region and analyzed using PLS-SEM. The results showed that approaching and common grounding had a positive effect on customer trust, while only communication had a positive effect on customer satisfaction. Agent competence had positive effects on both customer trust and customer satisfaction. Furthermore, customer trust enhanced customer satisfaction and renewal intention, while customer satisfaction was the strongest predictor of renewal intention. The study concluded that, in the Indonesian life insurance industry, agent competence is a key driver of customer trust, satisfaction, and loyalty. These findings provide both theoretical contributions to relationship marketing literature and practical implications for insurance companies in developing agent training programs that emphasize technical competence and transparent communication. They also offer implications for regulators in strengthening professional certification requirements to reduce information asymmetry and enhance consumer protection.
Copyright (c) 2026 Rully Adriana Swarnaputra
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC-BY-SA). that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
