Life insurance premiums in China expand 67 pct in first 7 months
28/8/2008 16:21
Life insurance companies in China, both domestic and foreign-funded,
collected 481.89 billion yuan (US$70.55 billion) in premiums in the first seven
months of this year, up 66.7 percent year-on-year, the China Insurance
Regulatory Commission (CIRC) said today.
The growth rate was 2.3 percentage
points higher than in the first half alone, it said.
In terms of life
insurance premiums, the total included 203 billion yuan for China Life, up 54
percent, 61.4 billion yuan for Ping An's life insurance company, up 30 percent,
and 43.7 billion yuan for Pacific Insurance's life assurance branch, up 58
percent.
In July alone, these three collected premiums of 12.8 billion yuan,
7.5 billion yuan and 4.8 billion yuan, respectively, up 98 percent, 48 percent
and 55 percent over the year-earlier level.
Luo Yi, an analyst with China
Merchants Securities, attributed the fast growth to sales of investment-oriented
policies through banks, which could result in risks such as exaggeration of
investment returns and weak supervision.
Chen Wenhui, assistant to the CIRC
chairman, said earlier at an internal meeting of the commission that sharp
fluctuations in the insurance sector should be avoided and steps should be taken
to achieve a soft landing of the life insurance business.
Chen's comments
were echoed by Jin Wenhong, chairman of Pacific Insurance, who said the rapid
expansion of investment-oriented life insurance exposed the entire insurance
industry to extreme volatility.
Wan Feng, president of China Life, noted in
the second half year, his company would stick to marketing traditional policies
and develop investment-oriented products appropriately.
In the remainder of
the year, growth in premiums for life insurers would slow, Wang Xiaogang,
analyst with Eastern Securities, forecast.
Xinhua
|
