Life insurance is serious business. So it’s probably a bad thing that ING’s X. Rick Niu laughed when he saw his first Chinese-language life insurance brochure.

The pamphlet explained that if the policyholder died at an unexpectedly young age, the claim payout would be greater. But it was translated to say, “die-faster” and sounded like encouragement to hurry up and die so you’d get more money.

Selling insurance across culture lines is tough; a lot tougher than a few hurried translations, said Niu, ING’s chief growth officer, a newly created position at the company.

America’s vast number of first- and second-generation immigrants is a potential goldmine of business, with that population growing by the day. But reaching that goldmine takes some maneuvering.

For starters, a one-size-fits-all mentality doesn’t work, Niu said.

For example, Asian Americans are typically big savers, so it would be wise to offer financial products that appeal to that impulse, Niu said. But Hispanics – because they’re so often foreign-born – are often completely new to life insurance, so it is going to require some teaching skills as well as selling skills.

Accustomed to operating on objective, standardized business processes, insurance companies are – sometimes shakily – trying to tailor themselves toward different ethnic and cultural groups.

Immigrant Insurance Infancy

Insurers tout their progress thus far, but many of these efforts are still in the early stages. On the other end of the spectrum, immigrant groups say they’re still struggling to get the insurance they need, be it life, home or auto coverage.

Many insurers target certain groups by getting their products into the hands of agents who are of that desired ethnic group, figuring customer connections will happen naturally.

MetLife Auto & Home has spent the past few years courting the Hispanic market, said marketing manager Tommy Lee Hayes-Brown, by seeking out bilingual agents.

They’ve also had to offer up some cultural education: Agents might be used to customers who prefer to get down to business immediately, he said, but that doesn’t fly with many Hispanic customers. They’ll expect you to chitchat; they’ll want you to ask about their daughter’s wedding or other personal details, Hayes-Brown said. Understanding those details makes a big difference.

MetLife had begun by trying to reach a number of different ethnic groups, but found that it was too big an undertaking – by trying to do everything at once, Hayes-Brown said, MetLife ended up doing very little. Focusing on one group at a time has proven a lot more effective.

Eschewing the one-at-a-time approach, ING launched a multi-front effort two years ago to sell life insurance and financial products to a number of ethnic and cultural groups, including African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics and gays and lesbians.

That means perfectly translated materials, bilingual customer service, culturally based judgments about which colors to use on brochures. ING has also tried to beef up the diversity of agents selling its products. They have hired 75 percent more agents from differing cultural and ethnic groups – now ING has 1,500 such individual life agents out of 20,000-25,000.

The Insurance Information Institute points to a number of other insurers’ efforts to connect with different groups: New York Life Insurance seeks out bilingual agents; State Farm sponsors the Hispanic Journalists Forum; and Allianz Life Insurance gives scholarships to Hispanic students.

But Eric Rodriguez, a deputy vice president with Hispanic immigrant group LaRaza, said those outreach methods don’t connect like they need to.