New York Life expands, eyes new alliances

In its bid to keep up with the competition, New York Life Insurance (Philippines) Inc. is now exploring new alliances with other financial institutions and allied services.

New York Life is reportedly holding talks with five to six brokers to compliment its existing agency force which is numbering over a thousand. In fact, the agency force is projected to reach an even 2,000 in the near future.

Brokers can give the life insurer an instant sales force although the cost factors may change. That instant size growth could be complimented by the establishment of three new offices in Northern Luzon and two more in the Visayas.

It is also exploring alliances as well as studying other financial markets.

The life insurer is looking for an 80-percent growth in first-year premiums this year from the P189-million worth of annualized first-year premiums last year, the three-year old life insurance company is looking to gain another P323 million in new premiums this year.

It will continue to rely heavily on its multi-distribution network to increase sales coming from its agency force and banc-assurance among others.

Of the total new premiums last year, an estimated 25 percent, or nearly P50 million, was sold as a direct result of its alliance with Allied Banking Corp. (Allied Bank). Single premiums including the US dollar-based policies, accounted for less than 10-percent of the annualized first-year premiums.

This year, it is looking to increase to 30 percent the contributions through bancassurance, and up to half of total contributions by 2007.

New York Life Phils. sold five percent of its equity to Allied Bank late last year to fulfill regulations of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to practice bancassurance or cross-selling from a banking point of view.

Thus, the life insurer was allowed to sell life policies utilizing Allied Bank’s branch network of 283 nationwide. It will also be able to dig into the bank’s client base to sell or expand its network.

The insurer already fielded 77 financial executives (FEs) in the bank’s branches, and it should hit the century mark by the middle of the year.

New York Life already introduced 45 products and it is seriously studying offering variable life products soon. – Ted Torres