Philam Life explores wider investments portfolio of gov’t infra

“People do not want to talk about insurance but with our vitality program they are able to talk about savings, life insurance, and financial planning,” he said. According to the 2016 Healthy Living Index, health is the primary concern of Filipinos. However, this does not translate into action, creating a gap between their concern and what they actually do.

Philam Life believes this gap is an opportunity and is placing its focus on capturing the wellness sphere.

This gap has also forced insurance firms to migrate into VUL (variable universal life insurance), a form of cashvalue life insurance that offers both a death benefit and an investment feature. Now, more than 70 percent of premiums are in VUL.

Ng Keng Hooi, AIA Group chief executive, and Jacky Chan, AIA Regional

Philam Life, the country’s premier life insurance company, is looking at expanding its investment portfolio in the infrastructure sector as it plans to extend financing to more government infrastructure projects.

Philam Life CEO Ariel Cantos said during a media roundtable for the company’s 70th year of operation in the country that they are just awaiting for the guidelines on how they can participate noting that part of their mission is to help in nation building.

Among the government’s various infrastructure projects in which the Duterte administration has allocated

budget, Cantos mentioned railway projects saying these are the kinds of projects for the safekeeping of their clients’ premium payments. These projects will also be a good follow up to their previous investments in the Coastal Expressway, science park and in the AC Energy of Ayala Corp.

Aside from being a direct investor, the company is also looking at extending funds for the banking sector for the project financing of the government’s “Build, Build, Build” program.

As such, Cantos expects more significant project financing this year that will come from its income that it generates from premium payments.

Philam reported a net income of R38.5 billion in 2016, which was 3 percent higher than 2015 and a lot better than the industry’s negative growth. Combined with BPI’s bancassurance, Philam has R256 billion in total assets and capitalization of R1.39 billion, which is more than twice of what is required by Insurance Commission. This makes Philam Life number one in the local insurance industry. Cantos expects better growth performance this year as it introduced the company’s marketing shift strategy to health and wellness products under its “Live Better” campaign rather than the traditional method of selling insurance policies.

Cantos noted that this campaign will bridge the gap between the traditional concept of insurance where clients refused to talk about as it deals about untoward incidents or death that is about to happen and into making more Filipinos embrace the idea of insurance as protection. Last year, the company also launched its “Vitality” program. chief executive also attended the media roundtable. Philam Life is a member of AIA Group Limited, the largest independent publicly listed pan-Asian insurance group.

For his part, Ng Keng Hooi noted of the prevailing rate of under insurance even among top executives. Noting that some of the deaths of the recent airline crashes showed that executives are not well covered according to their worth.

Meantime, Jacky Chan cited the Philippines’ economic performance and its potential as it followed after China, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

This is the reason Philam Life is strengthening its presence in this country where insurance penetration contributes to a mere 1.75 percent of GDP. In Japan, the percentage is in the high double- digit number.