Insurance sales to mainland visitors soar

First-quarter proceeds hit HK$9.61b as key players cash in on border reopening

Life insurance sales in Hong Kong to mainland visitors surged by 28-fold in the first quarter as the reopening of the border unleashed a wave of pent-up demand, according to data from the Insurance Authority yesterday.

Sales of policies to mainland visitors stood at HK$9.61 billion in the three months to March, compared with HK$345 million a year earlier, representing 20.5 per cent of overall sales in Hong Kong during the period.

However, this still fell short of the pre-Covid level when mainlanders bought HK$12.8 billion of life and medical policies in the first quarter of 2019, representing 26.4 per cent of the total.

Leading players such as AIA Group, HSBC Life, Manulife and Prudential reported strong growth in sales to mainland visitors during the period, helped by the full reopening of the border between Hong Kong and the mainland on January 8.

“The opening of the Hong Kong and mainland border has certainly been a key driver of sales growth in the first quarter of this year,” said Edward Moncreiffe, CEO for Hong Kong and Macau at HSBC Life. “We have seen strong pent-up demand from mainland visitors and Hongkongers for our health and wealth solutions.”

HSBC Life was the top-ranked insurer in the first quarter with a market share of 21.7 per cent.

“As investment returns and asset prices globally continue to be challenged by higher interest rates, we expect to see continued strong demand for secure-return and low-maintenance insurance products through the rest of the year,” Moncreiffe said, adding sales had already surpassed prepandemic levels in 2019.

The return of mainland buyers helped drive overall new life insurance sales, which rose by 10.7 per cent year on year in the first quarter to HK$47 billion. This was 2.9 per cent lower than the first quarter of 2019 when overall sales stood at HK$48.4 billion.

Mainland visitors, the biggest spenders on Hong Kong insurance policies before the pandemic brought cross-border travel to a standstill for the past three years, started to return to the city to buy products in the fourth quarter of last year.

They spent only HK$2.1 billion, or 1.5 per cent of the total, on life and medical insurance policies in Hong Kong in 2022 as a whole, the data showed.

Though this eclipsed the amount in 2021, it was still far short of the HK$43.4 billion in 2019, the last year before the pandemic broke out.