Sun Life set to hit 5-year growth targets

The Philippine unit of Canadian insurer Sun Life Financial Inc. is on track to hit all of the four targets under its five-year growth plan until 2015, even though the local insurance industry is facing tough times ahead, company executives Friday said.

Sun Life of Canada (Philippines) Inc. president and chief executive Rizalina G. Mantaring said in a press conference that the robust insurance sales experienced in the previous years would be tempered by the prevailing low interest rate environment, as well as volatile financial markets.

The relatively lower interest rates of late slash the spreads to offer traditional insurance products, thus making unit- or investment-linked products more appealing these days, Mantaring noted. However, even unit-linked products have been affected by the volatility in the capital markets, causing a decline in the premiums market during the first quarter of the year.

“[There] would be a bit of a breather for the industry this year. Growth is still a possibility, but not as strong as in previous years,” she said.

But company executives expressed confidence that Sun Life’s “Route 5 Goals,” crafted in 2010, would all be achieved next year.

The Philippines, they said, is one of the Canadian insurer’s growth drivers.

“Outside of Canada, the Philippines is Sun Life’s most successful market in the world,” Sun Life Financial president and chief executive Dean A. Connor said, explaining that the country contributed a “significant portion” of global sales.

A recently released Insurance Commission (IC) report showed that in 2013, Sun Life Philippines jacked up its total premiums by 48 percent to P29.7 billion—the largest haul among life insurance firms in the country during the period. It was the third consecutive year that the company topped the industry in terms of premium income.