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| Friends Provident managing director Ben Gunn will further develop opportunities in Hong Kong, the biggest market in the UK company’s international profile |
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British-based insurer Friends Provident Life & Pensions - one of the biggest life insurers in Britain and a top 100 firm on the FTSE index - has entered the Hong Kong life insurance market with the recent takeover of Royal & Sun Alliance's international life business, including its Hong Kong office.
Managing director Ben Gunn said the company's immediate plans were to expand the Hong Kong office and use it as a springboard to other Asia-Pacific countries.
"Hong Kong is an excellent market for our Asian expansion plan because it has a large pool of sophisticated and wealthy clients,'' he said. "We are very keen to expand our Hong Kong office and use it as a base for expanding our life insurance business in the region."
The company manages HK$740 billion (US$95 billion) worth of assets and has 2.5 million customers. Mr Gunn said the company wanted to expand in Hong Kong and Asia because its British home market was very competitive. In contrast, Hong Kong's insurance market has a lot of room to grow, he said.
"Hong Kong is the biggest market in our company's international profile and we plan to expand the SAR market further,'' he said. After expanding the Hong Kong office, the company will move towards expanding in other markets such as Singapore, he added.
Friends Provident has launched a regular savings plan in Hong Kong that will allow policyholders to invest in 19 investment funds. Mr Gunn said now is a good climate for launching the investment-linked products because some would like to buy at a lower time of the market.
Instead of hiring agents, Friends Provident will use independent brokers and financial advisers - who usually have a better overall financial knowledge than agents - to sell products in Hong Kong.
"Hong Kong has a lot of net-worth clients who will not buy policies just because of their relationship with the agents,'' he said. "They are the ones who know exactly their own financial needs, and require independent financial advisers to offer them in-depth investment advice.''
Mr Gunn said Friends Provident considered Hong Kong a priority in its development in China because the mainland insurance market is still at an early stage of development.
China insurance companies are now mainly selling by agents which are the selling method preferred by Friends Provident, he said.
Related link:
Friends Provident www.friendsprovident.co.uk
01/04/2003
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