Cocolife president & CEO Atty. Martin Loon: ‘The grace of the office’
Some of us seek to be transplanted in order to grow; others flourish where they are planted. In the case of lawyer Martin Loon, who found himself the youngest president of Cocolife at age 32, it was the second proposition.
He looked at his office as a “grace.”
“At first, I thought it was a burden. I never planned to be president of an insurance company or be an executive in the corporate world. I always thought I was just going to be a teacher and a lawyer because I also teach in UP. And I was teaching in the Ateneo at that time,” shares the now 34-year-old Martin.
But, he muses, “Sometimes you may not be the most experienced or the most intellectual, but when you’re chosen for a particular position, when you’re chosen for a particular role, I think God gives you everything you need to succeed in that role, to succeed in that mission.”
Not that Martin isn’t quietly armed to the teeth with credentials. He pursued his law studies at the University of the Philippines, College of Law with a Juris Doctor degree. He was a member of the Order of Purple Feather, UP Law Honor Society, the UP University Student Council and the Sigma Rho Fraternity. He obtained his Masters of Law from Georgetown University Law Center.
In less than two years under his leadership, Cocolife, a private corporation, marked the highest net income in its 42-year history. Martin, who was elected Cocolife president in March 2019 despite being the youngest member of the board, spearheaded reforms that reaped Cocolife’s first international awards — International Business Magazine recognized Cocolife as the Most Outstanding Life Insurance Company in the Philippines and the Most Outstanding Healthcare Provider in the Philippines, both for 2021.
“And I’m very proud because we covered almost a billion pesos worth of COVID-related claims since the start of the pandemic. And we chose to cover that in first few days of the pandemic. We made that decision,” says the young lawyer, who is the founding partner of his own law firm and was the youngest member of the Consultative Committee to Review the 1987 Constitution.
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Martin, a professorial lecturer of International Security Studies and Politics and Governance at the Ateneo de Manila University and a professorial lecturer in Insurance Law at the UP College of Law, was inspired by his grandfather Jose Azcarraga, a provincial lawyer who took on pro bono cases. Before joining the corporate world, he, too, took on some pro bono cases.
“You get the chance to defend people who need defense. You get the chance to assert the rights of people who really have no means to assert their rights. When I was a volunteer lawyer in the Office of Legal Aid in UP, I got to see how some of our countrymen deal with legal problems. They have very limited resources to afford lawyers, very limited resources to afford the representation. Seeing the suffering of these people, you realize law capacitates you to really help out. And to me, that affirms my decision to this day to pursue law.”
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Even as he transitioned to the corporate world, Martin didn’t lose his heart for justice. Martin championed the call to cover COVID-19 related insurance claims, despite pandemics being an exclusion to such claims. He was one of the first to make such a call. This led Cocolife to positively impact the lives of 50,000 Filipino families with about P1 billion in COVID-19 related claims.
“Pandemics are usually an exclusion in insurance contracts,” Martin points out. “Meaning to say, insurers specifically exclude those things. In most of our contracts, at least, we exclude these kinds of claims or coverages. But I think on the third day of the lockdown, I made an announcement that we were going to cover. We had no time to really… I just said, ‘No, we have to offer this because people have to have a level of certainty, our clients have to have a level of certainty. So we really decided to cover.”
Martin says he made the decision as a Filipino.
“We had been doing business for 42 years in the Philippines at the time. I felt that if we were able to do this during good times, we should also be there for the Filipinos during bad times. It shouldn’t just be a one-time thing. You shouldn’t reap the benefits during good times, but refuse to accept responsibilities during bad times. I think that our role is to be there in good times and bad times for Filipinos,” believes Martin, who was recognized by the Asia CEO Awards as an awardee of the Circle of Excellence for the category Young Leader of the Year 2021.
Despite paying out P1 billion in COVID claims, the Cocolife ship remained steady and seaworthy. How so?
“We cut down on a lot of expenses — no travels, no perks, no transportation. And then we increased our premium sales also. We were able to sell more policies. Sales continued even during the lockdown. So, that really helped us a lot, the premiums increased further. It was a blessing at the same time, an opportunity to be a blessing to others.”
Despite the P1-billion price tag on Martin’ decision to honor COVID claims even if pandemics were an exclusion to their contracts, the Cocolife board supported him.
“The board readily agreed when we gave the rationale for that decision. And I was telling them how we respond to the pandemic will really define how the future generations of Filipino insurance clients of Cocolife will remember us. I don’t want to be remembered as an insurance company that shirked from the responsibility that came out of this pandemic. I want to be remembered as a company that really was there, was consistently there.”
At the end of the day, it was all about advocating for the better interest of the Filipino.
“And it turned out well. It’s not nice to be remembered as a company that ran away or that stopped paying claims just because it was an exclusion or just because the pandemic happened. I think, how we will be remembered would be priceless,” believes Martin.
Indeed, one’s office can be a source of “grace” — and not just for oneself.
(You may e-mail me at [email protected]. Follow me on Instagram @joanneraeramirez.)
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