NH Life Insurance Co. has catapulted into the top position this year in the areas of new life insurance contracts and first premium collection, leaving the top three life insurance firms in the country — Samsung Life, Hanwha Life and Kyobo Life — in its dust, life insurance industry sources said recently.
NH Life’s outstanding performance has been owed to the vast operational network of the National Agricultural Cooperatives Federation (NACF), which helped to expand the sale of “bancassurance” by NH Life around the country. If the current situation continues, the list of the top three life insurers might change even more, as NH Life makes its case to be amongst , the industry sources added.
According to the life insurance industry, NH Life collected its first premium payments amounted to 2.998 trillion won as of the Sept. 30, the largest in the industry, followed by Samsung Life with 1.955 trillion won, less than around 1 trillion won compared to what NH Life collected and Hanwha Life came in with 1.454 trillion won with Kyobo Life following next with just 893.2 billion won.
It’s a similar story for the number of new life insurance contracts.
NH Life topped all others in the industry — with 1,584,284 cases valued at 24.699 trillion won, followed by Samsung Life with 1,543,185 cases valued at 23.529 trillion won.
Again, NH Life’s astounding figures are owed to NACF’s huge operational network around the country, considering that NH Life kicked off its operation only three years ago. The government waved the regulation that NH Life cannot sell bancassurance if its share goes beyond 25 percent of its overall financial product sales for five years. The government move helped NH Life immensely with around 95.3 percent of its first premium coming from the bancassurance channels. Samsung Life collected 64.8 percent of the first premium payments through the bancassurance channels, Hanwha Life 62.6 percent, Kyobo Life 59.4 percent -- all of those firms collected around 30 percent less than what NH Life collects through Bancassurance channels.
NH Life’s first premium collection through bancassurance as of the end of September came to 2.858 trillion won, followed by Samsung Life with 1.270 trillion won, Hanwha Life with 655.3 billion won and Kyobo Life with 531.2 billion won.
The payment of insurance premiums has also been rising of late with NH Life collecting 7.836 trillion won as of Sept. 30, already over the figures for the entire year last year, but its number of life insurance policy holders fell short of the Big Three.
Samsung Life topped all others with its collection of life insurance premiums, coming in at 18.458 trillion won as of the end of the third quarter this year, followed by Hanwha Lilfe with 9.938 trillion won and Kyobo Life with 9.858 trillion won.
NH Life came fourth this category, unlike the collection of first premiums.
But NH Life’s insurance products are made of short-term products intended for savings purposes, which could bring losses to the company when the interest rates falls. Treasury bonds currently pay 2 percent per annum interest rate.
Life insurance industry sources said NH life needs to have long-term strategies to ensure stable growth through diversification of its product portfolio, not just the sales volume.
