BBL to add risk protection to bancassurance
Bangkok Bank will focus next year on home-owners who do not carry a mortgage for its bancassurance products, as well as including more risk coverage.
Senior vice president Pochanee Kongkalai said the recent flooding had boosted awareness among home-owners of the need for insurance. Bangkok Bank is one of two banks that offer flood coverage.
She said bancassurance was a comfortable channel for retail customers, so the bank was cooperating with its two insurance subsidiaries, Bangkok Life Assurance and Bangkok Insurance, to develop additional bancassurance products.
She noted that although flooding as bad as the recent event was rare, when such disasters do occur, the damage is massive. “As a bank and insurer, we should consider including additional risk coverage in our policies to ensure customers are well protected when they buy our insurance,” she said.
She said the flood had encouraged people to pay more attention to insuring their property, especially customers who have no mortgage. Therefore the bank will promote a home-protection product to non-credit customers, who often pay less attention to property insurance than those carrying home loans.
In the life-insurance segment, the bank will focus more on savings insurance, with new policies offering lower premiums because a slowdown in the economy might discourage customers from buying such insurance.
She noted that the bank continued to offer flood coverage with its property insurance to retail customers because local insurance firms can handle this level of risk, while to offer such coverage to corporate customers, local insurers have to rely on reinsurers overseas.
Retail customers account for 70 per cent of Bangkok Bank’s insurance business, with the rest business clients. In term of premiums, life assurance is the major portfolio at 80 per cent.
Gross premiums via bancassurance in 2011 grew by 30 per cent, and the bank targets at least the same growth in the new year.
