AIA Thailand's new CEO plans to improve agents' efficiency
The new chief executive officer of AIA Thailand vows to improve the efficiency of its agents to ensure the firm's leadership in the life-insurance market.
Saloon Tham, who was appointed CEO two months ago and took office yesterday, told a press briefing that his key mission was to apply technologies to strengthen the agency channel as it is important for drawing new policyholders.
The company currently acquires about 100,000 policies per month.
He said AIA had spent a lot of money to develop its iPOS application to help its agents service customers quickly.
AIA Group assigned Tham to speed the development of quality agents to secure the market leadership.
AIA Thailand currently has 70,000 agents, and plans to expand that number by 20 per cent.
He said half of the new policies sold in the country went to AIA Thailand, whose focus on quality agents would help maintain such figures.
AIA currently has 10 million policyholders. In the first six months of the year it saw new premiums of US$265 million (Bt8.3 billion), an increase of 9 per cent year on year, and the value of new business expanded by 11 per cent to $146 million.
Tham, who has about 25 years’ experience in life insurance, said that even though agents were a key channel, AIA Thailand is ready to talk with new bank partners.
He said the Thai market continued to see high growth as the penetration rate is 36.7 per cent and the growing number of middle-income people is a good prospect for driving premium income. The recent share acquisition in a local life insurance company by a Japanese insurer reflected this potential.
Chief investment officer Anucha Laokwansatit said the company planned to invest in the US stock market as the tapering of that country’s quantitative-easing programme would bring a lot of capital back in. However, this would have to wait for the Finance Ministry to approve overseas investment by insurers.
“Investment in Thailand has high risk from political uncertainty,” he said.
AIA has total assets for investment of Bt600 billion, 85 per cent of which is invested in fixed-income products and the rest in stocks.
AIA expects return on investment of 7 per cent this year.
