Philamlife and BPI in bancassurance venture

CEBU, Philippines - A joint venture has been made by two major companies in the country dealing in the financial industry which partnership is seen to help both businesses and customers to benefit greatly.

The Philippine American Life and General Insurance Company (Philamlife) and the Bank of the Philippine Islands recently agreed to enter a strategic bancassurance joint venture.

With this, Philamlife agreed to acquire a 51 percent stake in Ayala Life Assurance Inc. (Ayala Life), which is BPI’s life insurance subsidiary and would now serve as the platform for BPI and Philamlife’s strategic bancassurance partnership.

Through the joint venture, which is subject to regulatory approval, the combined synergies, first-class resources and strength of the two companies will be maximized. Philamlife for their part will bring insurance distribution, product development, and innovation to the joint venture, and will be gaining exclusive access to BPI’s customer base through its extensive branch network.

According to Philamlife’s President and CEO Trevor Bull the partnership is a direct result of their strategy in focusing on the core life insurance and wealth management business.

“This is an exciting and positive development that will significantly increase our distribution footprint and offer a substantially wider selection of quality life insurance products to BPI’s customers, which are keys to success under the growing popularity of bancassurance in the region,” he added.

For his part, BPI President and CEO Aurelio Montinola III said: “We always look for quality partners and we are excited about the prospects of this partnership with Philamlife.  We believe that there are significant cross selling opportunities on both sides.  We feel that in the same way that Philamlife will have access to our customer base for life insurance products, BPI will have reciprocal access to Philamlife’s customers for banking products.” – AJ de la Torre