Pre-need plan sales down 22% in January

Sales of pre-need plan companies contracted by 21.82 percent in January this year, indicating that the pub-lic continues to wait on deve-lopments overseas before making any investments.

Based on data collated by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Non-Traditio-nal Securities Department, the value of the plans sold in January decreased to P2.91 billion from P3.72 billion, with pension plans posting the biggest drop in sales.

The number of pre-need plans sold likewise went down to 44,913 from 59,006 last year.

The number of pension plans sold fell by 35.86 per-cent to 20,801 from 32,431 a year ago. The value of their sales slid to P1.5 billion from P2.23 billion.

Sales of education plans also went down to P1.16 bil-lion from P1.13 billion, ac-counting for 13,339 units compared with 20,967 previously.

The number of life plans sold, on the other hand, rose 64.61 percent to 10,713 from only 6,508. The value of these plans grew 24.7 percent to P239.79 million from only P192.29 million.

Among issuers of educa-tion plans, Prudentialife Plans was the top seller with 4,540 units for a total of P54.03 million in sales followed by the Sobrepeña-controlled College Assu-rance Plans with 3,461 units and Berkley International Plans Inc. (1,543 units).

Owned by the Alba-San-tos group, Prudentialife was recently given the go-signal by the SEC to issue an addi-tional P2 billion worth of pension plans. CAP is con-trolled by the Sobrepeña family which is into real estate development.

Berkley, on the other hand, is the parent firm of Fa-mily First which markets the preneed plan firm’s services to prospective customers via its aggressive direct-selling activities in centrally-located malls.

In just four years of ope-ration, Berkley has emerged as number two in educatio-nal plans and number four overall in the pre-need industry in terms of new business.

In terms of sales, Berkley ranked second with P15.01 million. CAP came in next with sales of P14.31 billion.

Prudentialife also contin-ued to dominate the sales of life plans with 4,719 units, translating to P13.39 million in sales followed Pacific Plans (P8.39 million), and Eternal Plans (P3.51 million).

The pre-need industry re-ported a 41- percent decrease in first initial collection this year to P242.76 million from a P411.2 million last year.

The industry caters to clients who resort to pre-need plans as saving mecha-nisms to answer future needs of either themselves or their beneficiaries. The plans pro-vide for the educational costs of their children; their pension upon retirement; and memorial service upon their demise.