Grepalife wants to join top 5 by 2010

The Great Pacific Life Assurance Corp. (Grepalife) is looking to barge into the top five life insurers in terms of total premiums within the next four years.

At the start of 2006, Grepalife was ranked ninth among the country’s 34 life insurers with total premiums of P1.088 billion. The life industry’s total premiums amount to almost P47 billion last year.

This year, Grepalife officials estimate that total premiums will range in the P1.2-billion level or roughly a 10-percent increase.

In 2007, the life insurance company of the Yuchengco group projects premium income to grow by at least 30 percent to keep pace with its 2010 projection of joining the top five insurers.

"The challenge is to develop new investments, introduce more products, look for overseas opportunities, expand domestic sales, develop new marketing options, while maintaining beautiful bottomlines," Grepalife president and chief executive officer Victor P. Quisumbing said.

Quisumbing added that behind all those plans must be unwavering support from its stakeholders.

"Strong support from stakeholders, and support systems such as information technology plus competitive compensation packages for its force," he added.

The top contributors to the competitive level of premium income comes from group life, agency, bancassurance, and non-traditional marketing.

Grepalife is the recognized leader in the group life market. However, company officials said that they will be introducing new products while making innovations to its existing products.

But the biggest potential of the life insurer is in bancassurance.

Grepalife is the member of the Yuchengco group which includes the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) and RCBC Savings Bank.

The combined branch network of the two banks are almost 300. Grepalife can sell its products directly in the RCBC branches while it can devise marketing schemes in the case of the thrift bank.

Under the regulations of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), cross-selling or the sale of products of sister companies of the bank can only be undertaken within the commercial bank’s branches, not thrift banks.

The challenge for fully tapping the potential of bancassurance is two-fold in the case of Grepalife.

First, it must develop products suitable to the appetite of the commercial bank clientele. Second, and probably the more complicated, is finding a balance between in marketing life products of Nippon Life Assurance Co. and Grepalife.

Nippon Life ironically is partly owned by Grepalife and the Yuchengco group.

At the start of the relationship, Nippon Life concentrated on the high-valued market of the bank while Grepalife focused on the B- to C-market of the bank. After a year or two, the distinction was erradicated, in other words, all bank clients became fair game.

"It is something we have to work on," was the cautious words of Quisumbing.

By the end of October, the insurer’s net income amounted to P578.5 million, or 76 percent better than the P329 million in the same period in 2005. In fact, the 10-month earnings performance was already higher than the full year 2005 net income of P460 million. In 2004, net earnings grew to P300 million.

Net investment income of P811 million grew by 41 percent from the same period last year. Interests on bank deposits, commercial papers, and dividends contributed substantially to investment income.

It ranked eight in terms of asset amouting to P5.5 billion, and sixth in terms of networth amounting to P2.4 billion.

The top 10 industry players actually account for almost 80 percent of total premiums. Four of the top 10 players are Filipino insurers while the six are foreign insurers.