AXA premium income nears P18 B

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine AXA Life Insurance Corp. (AXA Philippines) has projected that its total premium income for 2014, would equal last year’s P18.2 billion.

AXA Philippines is a bancassurance joint venture between the Metropolitan Bank & Trust Co. (Metrobank) and AXA of France, considered among the top five insurers in Europe.

AXA Philippines president and chief executive officer Rien Hermans said its flat growth projection this year, generally mimics the similarly weak growth rate of the country’s life insurance industry.

Hermans said its sales performance was roughly nine percent better than the previous year.

“We are doing around nine percent above last year, even a bit higher than the current 109 percent of last year. Main reason for the gap in total premium income is the 21 percent weakening in sale of single premium which was somewhat offset by the 30 percent increase in regular premium,” he added.

Single premiums are traditional or variable unit linked (VUL) life insurance products with one-time payments. It was the leading reason for a strong 2013 premium performance.

VULs are life insurance products with a dominant investment component.

In the first nine months of 2014, AXA Philippines reported total premium income of P12.7 billion, while first year premiums (FYPs) amounted to P2.8 billion in the first nine months of 2014.

The FYPs, otherwise known as annualized premium equivalent (APE), was 7.8 percent better than the P2.6 billion recorded in the same period last year.

This includes regular premiums that grew 30 percent to P2 billion while single premiums amounted to P800 million reflecting the launch of the two new offshore equity funds.

Net income reached P800 million during the period from P1 billion last year due to a rebalancing of capital gains on investments realized in 2013.

A compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21 percent was noted for AXA, and a CAGR of 15 percent in the case of the life insurance industry.

Last year, AXA’s total premium income amounted to P18.2 billion, or good enough to land third best among the 27 life insurance firms recognized by the Insurance Commission (IC).