Philam Life eyes sixth spot in AsPac

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine American Life and General Insurance Co. (Philam Life) is poised to barge into the top six best performing countries within the AIA Group network, and in the process regain the top spot within the country’s life insurance industry.

Philam Life interim president and chief executive officer Estelito G. Madrid said the AIA Group, its principal, has expressed its confidence on the Philippine economy and its subsidiary.

“We want to get back at where we were. The confidence (of the AIA Group) in the Philippines in high,” Madrid said in a recent press briefing held in Hongkong.

AIA Group chief executive officer and president Mark Tucker pointed out that Philam Life was the most important business in most of Asia, prior to the 2008 global financial crisis.

“Philam Life was once the biggest business in the Philippines and there is no reason why we can not again be one of AIA’s biggest business,” Tucker said in the same briefing.

He added that Philam Life must join the other markets in the AIA’s top 6, which are Hongkong, Thailand, Singapore, China, Malaysia and Korea.

“Then (Philam Life) must join the top 3, again with the financial and people support to do that,” the AIA Group chief executive added.

Philam Life is presently bunches under the category “Other Markets” along with Australia, Indonesia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Vietnam.

That group jointly accounted for $212 million in value of new business last year, with the Philippines counted among the major contributors of that group.

Tucker revealed that Korea and Others Market group in general experienced negative growth last year.

“However, the Philippines in the past few years bucked the trend,” he pointed out.

Korea, ranked sixth among the leaders, reported $82 million in new business while fifth placed Malaysia reported new business amounting to $161 million.

In the Philippines, Philam Life ranked second in 2013 in terms of gross premium income. In the past decades, it had been the runaway leader in both premium income and profitability.

However, the AIA Group in the Philippines is larger with the several strategic partnerships with major foreign and domestic financial institutions.

Biggest among them is the bancassurance joint venture between the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) and Philam Life.

“Our bancassurance channels performed well in the second half of 2014,” Tucker said in a separate report.

AIA is the fourth largest listed insurer in the world with a market capitalization of $72 billion in end January 2015. It has an extensive network of agents, partners and employees across Asia-Pacific, serving more than 28 million individual policies and over 16 million participating members of group insurance schemes.