Foreign-owned life insurers see profits surge over last 2 years
Source: Asia Insurance Review | Sep 2019
The profits of the 28 foreign-owned life insurers in China made aggregate profits in 2018 that were five times those obtained for 2016, according to an analysis by Securities Daily.
The insurers also saw their market share increase marginally between 2016 and 2018 in terms of gross premium. At the same time, there was an improvement in operating efficiency among the foreign owned life insurers, as is indicated below:
There are 27 foreign life joint ventures and one wholly foreign owned life insurer (AIA) in China.
With the further opening up of the insurance industry to foreign insurers, competition in the life insurance industry will increase, particularly in the mid- to high-end customer base of life insurance business. The challenge for foreign owned life insurers lies in expanding their sales networks. One issue is whether foreign-owned insurers will face regulatory delay in approving their applications for new sales channels.
Liberalisation measures
Since April 2018, the Chinese authorities have announced three sets of measures to open up the financial sector to foreign investors, including the insurance market. The latest set of liberalisation measures was issued on 20 July. A
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