MANILA, Philippines — Insular Life (InLife) has launched a new program for its most valued clients called the Amorsolo Circle, and held an economic briefing during its launch.
The Amorsolo Circle is inspired by National Artist Fernando Amorsolo whose artworks depict the rich beauty, culture and history of the Philippines. His name means prestige, which is what InLife aims to give the Amorsolo Circle members.
Members of the Amorsolo Circle will be treated to first-class service, which includes first-rate financial advising by competent and professional InLife financial advisors who have undergone advanced training on financial/wealth planning, a backroom support that prioritizes the members’ needs through priority lanes and dedicated staff to assist them; relaxed underwriting requirements up to a total policy coverage of P25 million; shortened applicable financial questions; invitations to private events, exclusive product offers, niche webinars, special market updates.
According to InLife president and CEO Raoul Antonio Littaua, the Amorsolo Circle members will also get to take advantage of “…financial advisors’ know-how on risk management, wealth accumulation and decumulation, investment asset allocation and retirement and estate planning.”
Granting Amorsolo Circle members front seat access to financial markets, the event also included an economic briefing provided by JP Morgan Asset Management executive director for South East Asia Funds Anis Tiasiri, ATR Asset Management product manager DJ de Jesus, and InLife assistant vice president Paolo Puno.
Tiasiri said the world is recovering and different parts are moving at different speeds with Europe and the US moving from early to mid-cycle. “This will be a year for equities but a year where equities may not obviously deliver as high returns as before. On balanced (portfolios), we still prefer more equity than fixed income at the moment,” Tiasiri said.
De Jesus, who shared the Philippine experience said that 2021 turned out to be good for the economy. “There was an overall rebound on corporate earnings with most companies beating market expectations. Full year inflation was at 4.5 percent, slightly higher than the target mostly coming from pent-up demand as Filipinos started spending again after they refused to spend much in 2020 because of the lack of mobility. If there was a dip in market optimism, it was caused by lockdowns, the virus itself and inflation. ”
Both Tiasiri and De Jesus noted that they are seeing a trend among wealth management clients that are increasing the size of their portfolios into asset allocation strategies or multi-asset strategies.
Seeing this trend, InLife decided to offer its newest fund, the Global Multi-Asset Income Paying Fund (GMAIPF) to its clients so they can take advantage of its benefits. “As the investment climate improves, there is a need to provide investors an avenue for multi-asset solutions that are able to invest on both stocks and bonds and give regular income payouts given the still low interest rate environment,” Puno said.
GMAIPF is a peso or dollar-denominated fund that is invested in a target fund managed by JP Morgan Asset Management, and which has consistently provided about four percent dividend yield per annum even during market downturns since its inception more than a decade ago.