Sun Life Financial of Canada, whose local unit was recently named the country’s largest life insurance firm, has pledged its support for the Aquino administration’s infrastructure program by investing a substantial portion of its assets in big-ticket projects.
Group chief executive officer Dean Connor, who was in town early this week, said Asia would be one of the company’s biggest growth areas this year.
The Philippines, he said, would serve as the group’s “crown jewel” in the east.
“We have lent a lot of money to build toll roads, bridges, even courthouses in the markets we are in. We see that market opening up here in the Philippines,” Connor said in an interview.
“These assets (infrastructure) don’t just create jobs in the near term, they also grease the wheels of the economy,” he said.
Connor said the recent acceleration of state efforts on infrastructure spending was a good sign that policymakers were serious in creating more jobs and raising household incomes across the country.
He said this provided new investment opportunities too for financial service companies like insurance firms.
“We can say that we are interested in projects with longer tenors, those with 25- to 30-year maturity. We have been steady and reliable investors in these longer-dated infrastructure projects,” Connor said.
Sun Life Financial Philippines has about P120 billion to P130 billion worth of assets. Connor said the company could earmark as much as 15 percent of the amount for investment in infrastructure—the same level it allotted in other countries.
He said increased investments in countries like the Philippines was part of the company’s growth strategy wherein Asia was cited as one of the four major pillars that the company would stand on in moving forward.
The other three pillars were the company’s Canadian and American insurance operations, and its overall asset management business.
“By declaring Asia as one of those four pillars, we are saying that we are targeting for really ambitious growth,” Connor said. Last year, Sun Life sold 110-million Canadian dollars’ worth of premiums in its five Asian markets—Philippines, Hong Kong, Indonesia, China and India. About 40 percent of this came from the Philippines.
Asia represents 8 percent of the Sun Life group’s consolidated bottom line.
By 2015, Sun Life expects to sell 250 million Canadian dollars’ worth of premiums, more than double the 2011 level. All this growth, Connor said, would come organically from the company’s five Asian markets.
He said the company was also planning to set up operations in other Southeast Asian countries to further boost growth prospects.