SINGAPORE - Insurer Tokio Marine is accelerating its growth plans to catch up with the bigger boys in the industry and grab a larger slice of the life insurance pie.
The firm was the seventh biggest life insurance player here as at the end of last year, with a 5.3 per cent market share.
Its total weighted premium and in-force business premium - these are measures that track the performance of life insurers - came in at $202.7 million last year, a 69 per cent jump on 2012.
Its life insurance business comprises individual life and group units.
The group unit has done particularly well against its peers. It had a market share of about 6 per cent as at the end of last year, making it the fourth biggest player here.
The unit provides coverage for company employees, among other functions.
Mr Sebastian Tan, Tokio Marine's senior director for group insurance, told The Straits Times on Wednesday that the unit expanded much faster than the industry average of 10 per cent.
Its in-force business premiums stood at $54.6 million as at the end of last year, a 29 per cent increase from the previous year.
"We would have grown even faster if we had a larger agency force," he added.
The firm aims to boost its outreach by increasing the number of agents from 153 to 200 by the end of the year.
Tokio Marine is also looking at ways to improve its distribution by working more closely with independent financial advisers as well as banks, although it acknowledges that bancassurance tie-ups are not always easy.
"These days, banks are going for more exclusive relationships," said marketing head Manisha Seewal. "That is a challenge, but we do have Bank of China working with us, we have CIMB working with us as well on a non-exclusive basis."
Tokio Marine had also been working with Citibank, but that relationship will cease as the lender signed an exclusive 15-year agreement with AIA last year.
The deal is for AIA to sell life insurance through Citibank's branch network in its Asian-Pacific markets, including Singapore.
Tokio Marine's group business is also pushing out niche products and services that address market gaps, including a scheme that offers portable medical benefits to an employee when he leaves a company.
The coverage a worker enjoyed under the staff benefit plan can be continued and converted to an individual plan.
This means the worker pays the premium himself after quitting the firm but gets the same benefits at the same rates.
"We have the first-mover advantage and we are the only ones right now offering this portability feature," said Mr Tan.
The take-up rate, though not high, is encouraging, he noted, with about 60 employees from around 10 firms covered since the plan's soft launch in August last year.
This article was published on April 4 in The Straits Times.
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