wmafendi.com

KUALA LUMPUR: Great Eastern Life Assurance (M) Bhd is targeting a 27% growth in new business premiums to RM800mil this year, on the back of a strong first quarter and upcoming tie-up to sell insurance products through OCBC Bank (M) Bhd’s outlets.

“We are planning to launch our bancassurance business with OCBC Bank within three months,’’ director and chief executive officer Koh Yaw Hui told reporters at the graduation ceremony of the firm’s life planning advisors (LPAs) yesterday.

Great Eastern Malaysia is taking the advantage of the government’s recent move to allow foreign-owned life insurers to sell their products through foreign banks.

The firm is a unit of Singapore-based Great Eastern Holdings Ltd, which in turn is owned by Overseas-Chinese Banking Corp Ltd.

“The bancassurance business will give us additional distribution channel for our products,’’ Koh said.

Great Eastern Malaysia reported a 59% growth in new business premiums in the first quarter to RM170mil, up from RM107mil in the previous corresponding period. The increase was partly attributed to strong demand for new products launched during the quarter.

“We expect the whole industry to post positive growth in the first quarter, despite the weak economic condition during the period,’’ Koh said.

To further enhance its business, the firm is embarking on a project to strengthen its distribution channels.

Great Eastern Malaysia has assets in excess of RM37bil, over 2.8 million policies in force, 24 branch offices and a network of 17,000 agents nationwide.

“Professional agents are the driving force in distributing out products,’’ Koh said. To bolster its agents’ capability, the firm is targeting to have 3,000 agents completing their LPA course by end-2010.

To date, 600 have completed the eight-module training to become certified LPAs. Koh said the LPA graduates’ productivity rate was 2.5 times compared with the company’s average.

To serve its customers better, Great Eastern is also planning to open at least two new branches in the next two to three years, with one in Petaling Jaya and the other in Seberang Jaya, Penang.