Sun Life set to launch 3 bancassurance products

MANILA, Philippines - Sun Life Financial Philippines will launch three bancassurance products next year as the company strengthens its bid to take the top spot among the country’s life insurers.

Sun Life Financial president and chief executive officer Rizalina G. Mantaring said Insurance Commission (IC) has approved the company’s application to launch the product. However, Sun Life still needs the nod of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) before it can introduce the three insurance products through the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC).

Bancassurance is a global practice of collaboration between an insurance company and bank. It allows a life insurance company to sell its products within the premises of a bank’s branch network. In return, the bank must own at least four percent of the insurer’s outstanding equity.

Sun Life gained the right to practice bancassurance through a complex deal that effectively took over the bancassurance practice of Grepalife Financial, a member of the Yuchengco Group, which also includes RCBC.

“The three bancassurance products are basically investment-laced. It is either single pay (or one-time payment), five and 10 years,” Mantaring said in a press briefing. Investment-laced or linked products are life insurance products where a portion of the premiums are put into investment instruments.

In the past years, Sun Life has relied solely on its sales agency force as the principal distribution network for its insurance products. Yet it has risen to be recognized as the second largest life insurance in the country in terms of total premium income.

At the end of 2010, total premium income amounted to P10.6 billion. At the end of September this year, total premium income rose to P9.6 billion, up 31 percent from P7.3 billion in the same period last year.

Meanwhile, Sun Life is also eyeing to expand its business process outsourcing (BPO) activities next year. It presently manages 200 seats serving the company’s Asian operations.

Mantaring said Sun Life is mulling an additional 500 seats within the next few years to service its Canada and US operations, aside from the Asia and Pacific region.