Life insurers report surprising performance in Jan-Feb
Following the success of 2009, life insurance companies in Jan-February continued reporting good business results.
Korea Life surpassed the Jan-February business plan by 127 percent, in which its southern branch reached 172 percent of business growth and central branch up 104 percent and northern branch up 101 percent. A representative of Korea Life assessed, this was the special and surprising business result because 2010 Lunar New year lasted longer than normal. Korea Life is marking firm steps in the roadmap to become the seventh life insurer in terms of insurance premium till the end of 2010. While the premium of new contracts of other insurers in January all decreased against last December, Korea Life’s still grew by 27 percent.
ACE Life also announced that its 2009 insurance premium reached 490 billion dong, surging 159 percent from 2008. This was the remarkable performance of a life insurance firm only after four years from officially launching products in Vietnam. Presently, ACE Life keeps leading the life insurance market in terms of product par value with the average insurance value of over 300 million dong per contract. In 2009, the market share of new contracts of ACE Life accounted for nearly 10 percent of the whole life insurance sector, reported the general director Lam Hai Tuan.
Reportedly, the new insurance premium of life insurers all reached a high growth rate, led by Prudential, Bao Viet, Manulife Vietnam, AIA Vietnam, ACE Life, Dai-ichi Life Vietnam, Korea Life, Prevoir Vietnam, Cathay Life and Great Eastern Life.
Talking to Dau Tu Chung Khoan newspaper recently, Philip Hampden-Smith, currently head of Manulife’s six operations in the Asean cum a member of Manulife Financial’s Global Management Committee, said that Vietnam’s insurance contributes only 2 percent to its GDP while Asean countries’ are around 14-15 percent. “Therefore, we rank Vietnam in the list of young markets with rapid growth of 25-30 percent. In next five years, along with expanding network, we [Manulife] will focus on developing other distribution channels such as selling insurance via banks, general agent, micro-insurance to low-income earners and via cell-centre”, he said..
“Medium-class customers are targets of Manulife so we will boost launching health care and retirement insurance products,” he shared.
Last year Bao Viet Life Insurance reached total premium of 3.705 trillion dong, a year-on-year growth of 8.12 percent. The firm plans to raise the new insurance premium by 40 percent and total revenue by 9 percent in 2010.
Ministry of Finance lately estimated that the non-life insurance market could surge 20-25 percent this year and the life insurance market will grow by 10-15 percent compared with 2009. Also, total premium is targeted at 29.147 trillion dong including 16.297 trillion dong of non-life insurance, up 23 percent against 2009 and 12.850 trillion dong of life insurance premium, soaring by 12.41 percent.
Furthermore, the investment revenue of insurers could gain 6.474 trillion dong in 2010.
Tags: Vietnam insurance, Vietnam insurance industry, Vietnam insurance markets, Vietnam insurance sector, Vietnam life insurers