Life insurers enjoy strong growth in first three quarters

KUALA LUMPUR: The life insurance industry continued to deliver a strong performance in the first three quarters of 2016 with an 18.3% growth in new business weighted premium, which hit RM3.68 billion compared with RM3.11 billion achieved in the same period last year.
Traditional life insurance business, which grew 27.0%, outpaced investment-linked business, which achieved a respectable 12.0% growth rate.
Life Insurance Association of Malaysia president Toi See Jong said the gross sum assured for all new individual policies combined hit RM82.0 billion compared with RM68.0 billion in first three quarters of 2015.
Investment-linked business grew faster in terms of gross sum assured compared with traditional life insurance with growth rates of 24.7% and 7.2% respectively.
“It is heartening to note that the number of new individual policies issued in the first three quarters hit above the 1 million mark, at a growth rate of 2.1% compared with the same period last year. The growth mainly came from the regular premium traditional policies,” Toi said.
For the first three quarters of 2016, the life insurance industry paid out higher claims compared with the same period of 2015.
“The industry as a whole saw a 7.7% increase in benefit payments for death, disability, medical, bonuses and others amounted to RM7.11 billion as compared with RM6.61 billion for the same period last year.
“The industry also paid out RM2.65 billion in bonuses, due to surpluses in the life funds and as a payback to policyholders,” Toi said.
On the new business mix, despite the strong growth in traditional life business, investment-linked business continues to be dominant over traditional life business. Overall investment-linked business contributed 54.9% of the new business weighted premiums with the remaining 45.1% made up of traditional life insurance business.