AIA Insurance partnered Women’s Chamber of Industry and Commerce (WCIC) recently. The partnership contained AIA as a Gold Sponsor for WCIC PRATHIBHABHISHEKA – Women Entrepreneur Awards 2022, organized by the Women’s Chamber of Commerce (WCIC) and for WCIC’s strategic events to promote women’s entrepreneurship in Sri Lanka for 2022 – 2023.
As a company that has encouraged women’s empowerment, entrepreneurship and economic incorporation for decades, AIA sees a natural alliance and common vision with the goals of WCIC which is a national-level body driving women’s empowerment and financial inclusion around the nation. AIA’s ‘AYA SURAKINA AIA’ programme steers the economic freedom and advancement of women, be it employees, agents, customers or the community. Through collaborative partnerships, AIA holds large-scale research on women and insurance while helping make worthwhile positive impacts on Sri Lankan women by way of insurance solutions, financial literacy training, networks, recognition and access to information.
As an ideal workplace for women in Sri Lanka, AIA is solid in its dedication to gender equality and inclusivity for employees. Over the past year, the company has grown the percentage of women in its workforce to 41%. With 47% women representation in its sales force of Wealth Planners, in particular, 53% of women are among the Top 100 High Performing sales Wealth Planners, bringing in around half of the new businesses.
For AIA, it is not only about growing the number of women in the workforce, but more so about making sure of their growth and career development. Growing the share of ‘Women in Leadership’ is the main focus, from promoting flexible working hours to allowing growth through learning, coaching and ‘on the job’ local or foreign exposures. As an outcome, 21% of AIA’s senior management are women with the company’s women in insurance special roles counting 70% in operations and 63% in actuarial.