Sun Life expects to retain market leadership this year

MANILA, Philippines - Sun Life of Canada Philippines is on track to outperform anew this year in terms of new business as well as total premiums.

Riza Mantaring, president and chief executive officer of SunLife Financial Philippines, said with still a month left this year the company is already registering higher figures.

 “We will be higher (in 2015) than last year in terms of new business and total premiums,” Mantaring said.

In 2014, Sun Life’s total premiums stood at P30.7 billion as it retained leadership among the country’s life insurance players.

Sun Life is looking at P40 billion in total premiums after growing by an average of 32 percent.

From P13.9 billion in total premiums in 2011, it zoomed to P20 billion the following year and to P29.7 billion in 2013.

In the first semester, Sun Life reported premium income of P16.3 billion.

In the same period, the life insurance industry reported a 49.46 percent growth to P98.8 billion this year from P66.1 billion in 2014.

Early this year, Mantaring reported their five-year plan targets an annualized first year premium income of P5 billion. The plan does not include recurring business from maturing policies held by its 1.2 million policyholders.

The five-year plan also targets five million policyholders.

“The challenge is how to grow fast and qualitatively in a market that is grossly under-penetrated, or less than two percent of gross domestic product,” Mantaring said.