ING Capital Life expands territories, products

ING Capital Life Insurance Company Limited (ING Capital Life), the joint venture between ING Groep N.V. and Beijing Capital Group, had received approval from the China insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) to underwrite group life insurance business and to expand to Liaoning Province.

ING Capital Life will extend its scope of services to include group life, group short-term health and group accident insurance products through its Dalian headquarters and later through its branch office in Beijing, which began operations in January 2005. The products will be targeted at corporates and will complement ING Capital Life’s successful individual business.

At the end of 2004, ING Capital Life was the third largest in Dalian in terms of new premium income, with total premium income surpassing RMB180 million.

ING Capital Life’s Dalian office had also been granted permission to sell both individual and group insurance products throughout Liaoning Province, which is home to 42.2 million people and which allows the business to expand operations to the cities of Shenyang, Anshan and Fushun among others. Liaoning is part of China’s industrial heartland and home to an estimated 10 percent of the country’s large and mid-sized state-owned enterprises.

"Leveraging on the strength and support of the two partners, ING Capital Life has already made headway in the individual life insurance market, with over 30,000 customers since operations began in December 2002", said Barry Tsai, general manager of ING Capital Life. "Although we face increasing competition, we look forward to building ING Capital Life into a major insurer in Northern China leveraging ING’s international expertise and distribution via Capital Group’s businesses which include financial institutions, real estate and hotels."

ING Capital Life will continue to sell insurance products through its 1,200 agents in Dalian and 500 agents in Beijing, and has started insurance sales through Bank of Beijing’s 118 branches following the agreement by ING last March to purchase a 19.9 percent stake in the bank.

The approval by the CIRC for ING Capital Life to sell group insurance comes on the back of a similar license granted last December to Pacific Antai Life Insurance, ING’s insurance joint venture with China Pacific Insurance (Group) Company, to sell group insurance and which was one of the first licenses to be granted following deregulation under the WTO accession timetable to allow foreign insurers access to the group insurance market.

ING is a global financial institution of Dutch origin offering banking, insurance and asset management to over 60 million private, corporate and institutional clients in over 50 countries.