The Million Dollar Round Table: Is insurance’s most famous accolade now an overused honour?

SINGAPORE – The phrase “Million Dollar Round Table” (MDRT) inevitably comes up if you spend long enough speaking to someone who works in the insurance industry.

It appears on name cards, Instagram bios, LinkedIn banners, and the congratulatory posts that flood agents’ social media every March when agents are notified that they have made it into the global association for top-performing insurance and finance-services professionals.

For many in the industry, MDRT is a meaningful career milestone. But in recent years, an awkward question has arisen: has the benchmark become easier to reach and, if so, what does the badge now signify?

In 2001, qualifying for MDRT required earning US$63,000 (S$80,300) in commissions. In 2026, the threshold is US$72,400, only marginally higher in nominal terms and substantially lower in real terms after accounting for inflation.

The benchmark was higher when Charles Ting first qualified in 2014, just two years after entering the industry.  He needed to earn US$91,000 in commissions to make the cut.

“In the past, hitting MDRT was a benchmark that showed I worked really hard,” says the 38-year-old financial services director at Virtus Associates. “But today, you throw one stone, and everybody’s an MDRT.”

A lower real-terms entry threshold does not necessarily mean MDRT members are less capable, ethical or successful. After all, MDRT recognises production, not the quality of advice, client outcomes or consumer trust. 

But the falling bar suggests the industry itself has changed. What was once primarily a mark of individual achievement has become a recruitment tool, a branding exercise, and a cultural touchstone that firms use to attract talent and clients alike. It is part of a broader effort by insurers and advisers to recast their work as trusted financial advice rather than simply selling insurance.

MDRT – which is headquartered in Illinois in the US – tells The Straits Times that its requirements are calculated using a proprietary model drawing on World Bank and United Nations data. It is designed to keep the requirements for entry “approximately economically equivalent” across its markets.

The organisation’s spokesperson adds that it temporarily adjusted its methodology during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“MDRT continues to be an exclusive yet welcoming community for financial advisers to access customised content, engaging events and a global network,” says MDRT chief executive Stephen Stahr in an e-mail.

The numbers bear out MDRT’s growing reach. The top seven firms in Singapore collectively have 5,270 agents who qualified for MDRT status in 2025. There were over 17,000 insurance agents – including part-timers – in Singapore as of 2023, according to a parliamentary response by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

For some industry professionals, it remains a starting point. 

“It’s really a foundation,” says Joey Wu, financial advisory director at Financial Alliance, who notes that qualifying for MDRT status means making around $6,000 a month in commissions.

“We don’t have any CPF contributions, we don’t have annual leave or any benefits from the company. So I don’t think it’s something that can make us proud.”

In her view, the accolade matters most to those new to the industry. It signals not just an early measure of success but also a long-term commitment to the profession.

That explains why agency leaders often publicise the number of mentees they have coached to MDRT status. It is a bid to woo new talent to their firms, offering a vision that success in insurance – despite a general disdain towards sales-driven professions – is both achievable and repeatable.

For potential recruits, the message is simple: insurance may be a rejection-heavy sales profession, but with the right mentor, team and system, success is repeatable. 

The new route to qualification

Compared to veterans who entered the industry before the 2000s, qualifying early is no longer unusual for many younger agents. 

Ang Wei En reached MDRT in 2022 when he was still an undergraduate at Singapore Management University. He had joined AIA after completing national service two years earlier.

As he was going on an exchange semester in his third year, he set himself a target.

“I told myself at the end of year two that I have to get my MDRT, so that I can prove to myself at least that hey, I’m on the right track, so that I can do this full-time in the future,” says Ang.

With just two months left in 2022 and only halfway to his earnings target, he turned to his social network, reaching out to nearly 100 people through Instagram and Zoom. Around 20 became clients, helping him qualify for MDRT. 

His experience reflects a border shift in how advisers now find business.

When Victor Lim, 69, entered the insurance industry 42 years ago, finding clients meant knocking on doors, visiting businesses, asking to speak to the boss, working through the telephone directory and cold-calling strangers. The work was a numbers game that occasionally yielded a new client but far more often ended in rejection. 

Lim, who first qualified for MDRT in 2005, is blunt about why such prospecting methods are fading.

The introduction of the Personal Data Protection Act, together with the Do Not Call Registry, has sharply curtailed unsolicited cold calls, even if door-knocking at businesses remains permissible.

The profession’s image has evolved alongside its methods. When Lim started out, “insurance agent” was an unremarkable job title. Today, many prefer to call themselves “financial advisers” or “financial planners” instead.

A group financial services director, who declined to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the media, believes traditional prospecting methods such as door-knocking and roadshows shape not only how clients perceive advisers, but also how advisers see themselves.

“It comes from a lower position. It doesn’t make the adviser feel good,” he says.

Roadshows, he adds, can create their own pressures. After paying for booth rental, advisers often feel compelled to generate immediate sales, making them more aggressive in their approach and increasing the risk that selling takes precedence over careful financial planning.

Digital tools have eased some of those pressures, making it easier for advisers to build an audience before making a sales pitch. 

The gap between how the public views the industry’s most well-known accolade and how industry insiders actually see it is just one of the industry’s many cultural quirks, according to nine MDRT-qualified agents speaking to ST.

The personal mythos of insurance agents

There is a tone and style to the way that insurance agents post about their profession online, derisively described by Singaporean netizens as the “insurance agent starter pack”: photos of luxury cars, lavish meals and team holidays, often accompanied by captions expressing gratefulness to mentors and clients.

To Ting, the “big money, big cars” image is aimed at the mass market, industry shorthand for middle-income clients, and is largely cultivated by younger advisers still building their careers.

Others see the posts differently. Lim Yu Heng, an associate director at AIA Financial Advisers, says they signal competence and commitment to a profession known for its high attrition rate.

The 32-year-old says: “It’s not to flaunt wealth, but to let people know that you’re doing well. People think that if you’re doing well, you might be able to provide better advice, even though that’s not a direct relationship.”

For outsiders, however, the industry’s branding logic does not always resonate.

Christel Goh, founder of Grow Public Relations, says posts celebrating MDRT milestones and displays of an aspirational lifestyle may be admired within the insurance community, but can strike everyone else much like the endless stream of achievement posts on LinkedIn.

“People get desensitised. After the 10th MDRT post, it starts becoming repetitive,” she says.

Yet she understands why agents continue to share them.

“Sales is a tough, rejection-heavy profession. Posting a win isn’t just about impressing others; it’s also a way of reassuring yourself.”

Whatever the motivation, nearly all agents interviewed agree that lifestyle branding and the pursuit of accolades like MDRT status serve a core psychological purpose: it makes selling easier.

“When you talk about insurance, the first reaction is often ‘don’t want’,” says Joel Goh, a senior wealth manager at financial planning firm SG Alliance.

Inevitably, the agents that stick around are the ones who learn to overcome that instinctive resistance, not just in their clients but also in themselves.

For Goh, that moment came early in his career. Lacking confidence, he never followed up with an acquaintance whom another client had referred to him about buying a term life policy.

A year later, he received the man’s death claim notification.

“My heart sank. If I had done my job properly, if I really did my best in helping the client, his family would’ve been better off,” he says.

The experience changed how he approached his work.

“For me, I believe that whatever I do for my clients is in their best interest. So I never feel like I’m selling them something. But of course, when you first come into this line, you have that fear,” he adds.

For agency leaders, these stories are more than motivational. They reinforce the view of insurance as a public good and advisers as trusted protectors rather than salespeople, even as the business remains largely commission-driven. 

It is also why nearly every adviser has a well-rehearsed origin story, a defining moment that reinforces both their belief in the profession and the way they present it to clients.

For Lim, it was watching his family struggle after his father died of cancer when he was 14. The experience shaped his conviction about the importance of financial protection, and he still shares the story with clients to emphasise the consequences of serious illness or financial hardship.

For Ting, the turning point came in 2018. What began as a routine meeting with an orphaned client to discuss a basic hospitalisation plan evolved into a conversation about wealth accumulation. He left with a signed S$24,000-a-year investment-linked policy and reached his MDRT target that same week.

The industry’s well-known fondness for annual retreats and incentive trips provides the perfect stage for these stories to be told and retold.

While many insurance agents work at major insurance firms or their subsidiaries, others are employed by insurance brokers. For them, meeting sales targets set by the insurance firms can earn them expenses-paid vacations, yet another way insurers compete for their business and loyalty.

MDRT qualifiers often attend the organisation’s annual meeting, a big convention where insurance professionals come together to discuss its “whole person philosophy”, exchange ideas and learn how to grow their business.

“Parents in my team come back as better parents for their kids, partners for their spouse,” says Bryan Phang, financial services director at Prudential Singapore.

The digital approach

One of the industry’s biggest post-pandemic shifts has been the move away from old-school prospecting – cold-calling strangers and lingering outside MRT stations – towards digital tools and platforms.

The change has fundamentally altered how new business is won. Where advisers once chased clients, social media, influencers and digital marketing now bring prospective clients to them, often with the first inquiry coming from the client instead.

Wu, who has qualified for the MDRT’s Top of the Table since 2023 (a more exclusive category of the MDRT which requires one to earn over $400,000 in annual commissions), says that she has never met in person most of her over 1,000 clients.

Back when the now 41-year-old first joined AIA in 2014, she took a different approach, spending much of her time on door-knocking, cold calls and roadshows. “It’s just a numbers game,” she says of that phase of her life.

After striking out on her own in 2020 to join Financial Alliance, a financial advisory firm, she began focusing on creating finance videos for YouTube and Weibo and writing articles for blogs and the Chinese media.

One of her strategies was hiring influencers to draw audiences to her financial planning seminars, and later sharing part of the commission if the attendees they referred became clients.

“YouTube is a door opener to me,” says Wu, now a financial advisory director.

She says strangers are more likely to make an inquiry when they can put a face and voice to the adviser, rather than knowing them only through a written article.

These days, most of her business is conducted over Zoom, with contracts signed digitally.

In 2025, she sold 60 Indexed Universal Life insurance plans, the product which forms the bulk of her earnings. Annual premiums for these policies typically start at US$50,000 per policy and are not aimed at domestic consumers.

Technology has also changed what advisers expect from their employers. As digital marketing and lead generation become increasingly central to the business, agencies are now judged as much by the opportunities and support they provide as by their commission structures.

In this environment, MDRT has evolved beyond a personal badge of achievement into a management tool, one that agency leaders use to build culture, motivate advisers and market their teams. The shift has even produced its own accolade.

Bryan Phang, financial services director at Prudential Singapore, points to the MDRT Culture of Excellence Award, which recognises agencies rather than individual performers. His team has received the award every year since it was introduced in 2023.

Alarice Teow, 38, an associate director at Finexis Advisory, has spent over 17 years in the industry. Most of her meetings take place over Zoom while her more than 300 clients book appointments through Calendly, which syncs with her personal calendar.

“Technically, my clients have access to my calendar 24/7,” she says.

During the pandemic lockdowns, she once did 13 meetings in a single day. The increasing receptiveness to virtual financial consultations, she says, has been transformative for her business as it no longer means shuttling from one in-person meeting to another.

Where incentives and advice collide

MDRT’s growing cultural importance comes as the industry tries to present itself as a profession of trusted financial advice. But the underlying structure remains predominantly commission-based.

Financial advisers do not have a fiduciary duty (a legal obligation to protect a client’s financial interest), although they are bound by the Financial Adviser’s Act to give reasonable advice and avoid misleading claims.

That distinction matters most where product complexity, long lock-in periods and high commissions converge.

Few products illustrate that tension more than investment-linked insurance plans (ILPs), policies that combine life insurance coverage with investment.

Unlike traditional life insurance policies, the value of the ILP varies depending on the performance of the funds it invests in and returns are not guaranteed.

Much of the criticism levelled at ILPs revolves around how they are typically marketed towards the less financially literate, who are less likely to invest in other ways.

According to MAS data, while the number of ILPs in force has stayed stable across the past decade, total premiums paid to ILPs have skyrocketed from $1.9 billion in 2014 to $7.7 billion in 2024.

In May, MAS classified ILPs as complex financial products, which must carry a pre-transaction disclaimer.

The Financial Industry Disputes Resolution Centre (Fidrec) previously noted a surge in consumer complaints about ILPs in 2024 and 2025. According to Fidrec, most complainants do not understand what an ILP is.

Adam, a 34-year-old biomedical researcher who declined to share his last name, says that after purchasing his first ILP, he does not intend to purchase another. While the first plan was reasonable for his needs, with a $4,800 annual premium that would be non-taxable, this tax exemption has since lapsed.

He has stopped responding to constant messages from his agent, a four-time MDRT qualifier, who urged him to purchase another ILP with annual premiums of $20,000, which he says is unsuitable for his financial circumstances.

Adam says the experience has also made him sceptical of the way his adviser presents investment performance.

In his view, she selectively highlights information that supports her recommendations while glossing over less favourable developments, creating an impression that she is a more astute investor than the underlying performance suggests.

He points to her social media posts as an example.

After markets fell between 5 per cent and 10 per cent over several days before rebounding, she highlighted only the day’s gains, he says, presenting them as evidence of strong investment returns while omitting the losses that had preceded them. 

Dr Benedict Koh, professor of finance at SMU, says the tension between marketing and clients’ best interests is not new. He points to a speech made by then Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong in 2010 urging insurers to confront Singapore’s under-insurance problem.

Part of the problem, Goh argued, lay in the industry’s preference for pushing whole life plans, whose premiums could run three to five times that of a term insurance plan for the same coverage, pricing adequate protection out of reach for young families.

“I faced the same problem when I first started work. I could not afford a Whole Life Plan but had the good sense to choose a Term Assurance policy,” said Goh at the time.

More than 15 years later, the bundling continues; only the wrapper has changed. Eddy Cheong, chief executive of financial advisory Havend, notes that today’s fastest-growing ILPs are so-called “101 ILPs”, wealth accumulation products wrapped in the thinnest possible layer of insurance, with nearly all of the premium going into investment.

Agents, meanwhile, reject attacks that ILPs are problematic. Many say they often turn away clients who need a shorter investment horizon and that the new breed of ILP products is superior to ones from previous decades.

SG Alliance’s Joel Goh says: “There’s no such thing as a bad product. There’s always a tool for a solution. ILPs aren’t inherently bad. If a product was bad, it wouldn’t have been released in the market to be sold.”

Financial Alliance’s Wu notes that outside of the industry, few understand the intricacies of what it means to qualify for the MDRT. Most consumers do not distinguish between those who have only just barely scraped into its ranks and those who have qualified for Top of the Table (TOT) status, which requires a sixfold increase in commissions earned.

“MDRT, TOT, it’s all the same,” says Wu, who notes that the MDRT should only be the starting point for agents.

“To me, MDRT does not represent professionalism.”

For the high-turnover insurance industry, it is an effective accolade that serves as an incentive to continue on, she adds.

But for customers, MDRT status only signifies whether one’s insurance agent is successful at selling, and not the quality of their advice.