The Insurance Commission recently released the top Life Insurance Companies according to Total Premium Income as of December 31, 2012. There were a lot changes in the rankings from 2011, particularly in the top 5 rank.

Canadian insurer Sun Life Retains it’s number 1 position, a position it held since last year when they wrestled it from American insurance giant Philam Life. What is interesting to note is not only did they retain their ranking, the gap between the first and the second ranked company widened by a huge margin. In 2011, Sun Life surpassed Philam Life by a mere 300 Million by year end. By contrast, Sun Life’s difference from the runner-up in 2012 was a whopping 5 Billion Pesos with an astounding 44% growth from their 2011 numbers. It seems that Sun Life has been very productive and their various initiatives was bearing fruit, obviously — something her competitors are really seriously looking at for sure.

Coming in at 2nd place is the U.K. insurer Pru Life who had an astonishing growth and a jump of 2 notches from 4th in 2011 to 2nd in 2012. Last year was definitely a banner year for Pru Life who I noticed have been very active in its recruitment of more agents, among other initiatives. Moving 2 notches in the top 5 rank is no easy feat but Prulife of UK goes ahead of Philam Life who slips from number 2 in 2011 to number 3 in 2012. Prulife UK registered a huge growth of 57% from its previous year’s numbers which was enough to overtake Philam, albeit by a narrow margin of about 300 Million Pesos. Philam Life registered a growth of 13% from its 2011 premium base.

French insurer and one of the country’s pioneer in Bancassurance, Philippine AXA slips from it’s 2011 rank of number 3 to the 4th largest insurer by 2012 with a very respectable 23% growth in premiums from 2011 to 2012. Coming at the 5th place is BPI-Philam, the Bancassurance partnership between BPI and Philamlife who overtakes Insular Life who lands at the 6th spot. BPI Philam registered an incredible 78% growth from its 2011 numbers and was 800 Million Pesos away from Philippine AXA’s 4th rank. Insular Life delivered good numbers in 2012 with a growth of 23% from its previous year’s premium base.

Canadian insurer and the 2nd oldest life insurer in the Philippines Manulife and the Bancassarance organization Sun Life Grepa retains its 2011 rankings at 7th and 8th respectively. Both organizations also registered good growth in 2012.

Manulife Chinabank and PNB Life, both Bancassurance dominated organizations are in the top 10 ranks at number 9 and 10 respectively, also registering good growth numbers.

Cocolife and Generali Philippines slips out of the top 10 rankings by the end of 2012.

Some interesting facts:

1) 2 out of the top 5 insurers are predominantly Bancassurance organizations. Simply put, Bancassurance is an organization that can sell insurance products to the bank clients and are co-owned by an insurance company and a bank.

2) 5 out of the top 10 insurers are predominantly Bancassurance Organizations.

3) 3 companies in the top 10 are actually subsidiaries of 3 other companies in the roster.

4) Only 1 Filipino insurance companies makes it to the top 10, Insular Life making them the largest Filipino insurance company. 

5) Total Premiums generated by all Life Insurance companies totaled to P119,454,550,174

Congratulations to all the Life Insurance companies. My prayer is that more and more Filipinos understand the benefits of life insurance and be protected from life’s uncertainties.

Source : Insurance Commission

The Insurance Commission has released its report on the performance of life insurance companies as to New Premiums. The list includes First year premiums or FYP plus all Single Pay Premiums. FYP indicates the amount of new life insurance sold for a particular year and life insurance companies make sure that there is a steady flow of new business coming in their books to ensure their viability, market share and ultimately, profitability.

The Insurance Commission reports combined all new premiums, FYP & Single Pay into one report. Single pay premium are life insurance policies that require no further payment of premiums and are already fully paid. Customarily, many companies report single pay premiums only at 10% in their books and I believe the Insurance Commission should do so as well.

You will notice that 11 out of the top 15 companies sell a lot of Variable Insurance, this are insurance policies that have investment funds attached to it. Bulk of the premiums being brought in the form of variable insurance. In principle, variable insurance premiums are largely investment funds and in the strictest sense, not really insurance premiums… but let’s leave that with the Insurance Commission. Some refer to variable insurance as Unit-Linked or VUL. Further, insurance companies with Bank partners under a Bancassurance arrangement are getting a big pie of the share of premiums. In fact, a substantial amount of new premiums being generated for the past couple of years are coming from Bancassurance and through the sale of variable insurance.

Some tidbits that might be interesting enough to mention. Sun Life shows impressive performance even without a Bancassurance partner although they have recently bought half of Grepalife so one can be assured that their numbers will change next year. Insular Life is the only purely Filipino company in the top 5 category. Prulife is registering phenomenal growth in the new business arena largely through the sale of variable insurance. Philamlife’s agency operations tries to remain strong and continues to perform despite challenges. Generali Pilipinas, despite having a strong banking partner, BDO slips in the new business race with their decision to discontinue selling single pay premiums.

With the obvious growth of Bancassurance, what is the future of tied-agencies (exclusive agents of companies)? Seems there must be some re-learning, re-training and re-engineering that needs to be done for tied agencies if they are to survive the onslaught of changes. Personally, I believe the role of tied-agencies is very critical to the sustainable growth of the life insurance industry — agents can do better financial planning and can maintain stronger relationship with clients so I’m really rooting for them. But, both Bancassurance and tied-agency system can work together and provide financial security for Filipinos.

Off hand, I think the life insurance industry is doing a good job of providing financial security to Filipinos, such a herculean task. My only concern is scale — reports shows that way below 1/5th of the family heads of the country has some form of insurance. Growth in premiums may not necessarily mean more people are being insured. Any growth in new lives being insured is dwarfed by the increase in population.

My dream for this institution, and to all the other financial institution is this : sell less, and educate more — and the business will just flow.

My 2 cents.

The 2010 Top Life Insurance in total Premiums are here https://www.randelltiongson.com/top-life-insurance-of-2010-my-thoughts/