wmafendi.com

The insurer is on track to become top player in specific segments

KUALA LUMPUR: ING Insurance Bhd sees growth continuing this year on the back of its three-year expansion plan, says chief executive officer and president Datuk Nirmala Menon.

Despite the tough economic environment, the company was on track to achieve its target of becoming the top player in specific segments such as life insurance, employee benefits and bancassurance by the end of next year, she said.

“We initiated the plan early last year and are seeing positive results in terms of higher market share in life insurance and maintaining new premiums growth this year,” Nirmala said, referring to the company’s “Three-Year Profitable Growth Plan” strategy.

“Last year, new business premiums grew by about 26% and we hope to achieve the same this year,” she told StarBiz. “Our market share expanded to about 11% last year from around 9% in 2007, making us the third largest player in terms of new business premiums.”

Nevertheless, Nirmala, who is the first female CEO in the domestic insurance industry, acknowledges that some adverse impact from the economic downturn is to be expected.

She noted that people were risk averse and preferred safer products such as health insurance rather than investment-type products in these challenging times.

In terms of employee benefits coverage, ING Insurance is No. 1 in Malaysia with a market share of close to 40%, according to Nirmala.

With an agency force of nearly 9,000, ING Insurance views its sales force as the most important source of revenue, followed by bancassurance.

In bancassurance, the insurer had tied up with Public Bank in 2007 for a 10-year partnership to sell its insurance products.

Following the ING group’s back-to-basics strategy, in which it would now focus on simple and core products in all markets, ING Malaysia said it would be stressing on customer-centric products.

ING Insurance and Investment Management Asia-Pacific chairman and CEO, Hans Van der Noordaa, said the strategy, launched early this year, was designed to simplify and focus on the group’s core businesses – insurance, banking and asset management.

Clear distinctions would be made between the three businesess worldwide to prevent overlapping, he said, adding that the asset management business would be more prominent in view of its encouraging growth.

“The core markets for the group are Europe, the United States, Asia and Latin America. We will ensure that more simple products are rolled out in the near future which will meet consumers’ needs instead of the complex ones.

“Asia will remain the group’s key market due to its demographics, growth opportunities and strong fundamentals,” Van der Noordaa said.

The new strategy was expected to increase Asia-Pacific’s current contribution of about 6% to the group’s total revenue, he added.

ING Funds Bhd chief executive officer Datuk Steve Ong said sales of the company’s unit trusts had been holding up quite well despite the economic slump.

“We have not seen any negative growth in sales despite the volatile market. ING Funds, pending the launch of its new product later this month, is quite positive of registering a big jump in sales by the end of this quarter.

“We are also hoping that assets under management will hit the RM3bil mark by the year-end from the current RM2.65bil,” he said