PH seen becoming a major insurance market

SHANGHAI—The Philippines is fast emerging as a major market for French insurance giant AXA on the back of the country’s growing economy and considering its huge population that still has a relatively small life insurance penetration.

Benoit Claveranne, AXA Asia’s chief executive for life insurance, told reporters last Friday that he was “a big believer in the Philippines as a market, and in its potential.”

Claveranne cited the Philippine population of 100 million—the majority of which have yet to acquire life insurance, while the economy has been growing the fastest in Southeast Asia these past few years.

“In the next 10 years, the Philippines will be a much bigger market and business for AXA than what it is today. We just have to reach the right moment when you [the country] have both the quantity or number of clients and the level of wealth that goes with it,” Claveranne said, even as he declined to disclose specific growth targets.

AXA claims to be the third largest insurer in the Philippines, with its market share inching up to 11.7 percent last year from 11 percent in 2013.

In general, AXA sees Asia as a “key growth pillar” as it aims to have a customer base of 100 million in the continent by 2030.

From just 14 million customers in Asia to date, the region presents growth opportunities that the French insurer wants a big slice of, said Jean-Louis Laurent Josi, regional chief executive of AXA Asia.

In a presentation before Asian and European journalists flown to Shanghai, China, on Thursday, Josi noted that Asia’s population was seen to reach 4.9 billion in 2030 or seven times bigger than that of Europe, while the Asian economy would expand to $38 trillion by 2030—1.7 times larger than the projected European gross domestic product.

Another growth opportunity for insurers like AXA is the region’s rising middle class, even as there remain huge protection gaps that can be covered by insurance products and services, Josi said.

The protection gap, defined by AXA as the missing income to maintain living standard for dependents, in Asia stood at $32 trillion in 2012, the executive said, citing Swiss Re data.

Also, insurance markets in the region remain “very small,” with insurance penetration in emerging Asian countries at only about 2 percent of the population in 2013.