Chinese Insurance Market: Opportunities and Alternatives

[sanki]

Chinese Insurance Market: Opportunities and Alternatives
http://www.chinese-actuary.org/artic...nce_Market.pdf

[eagle_halo]

Originally Posted by sanki

Chinese Insurance Market: Opportunities and Alternatives
http://www.chinese-actuary.org/artic...nce_Market.pdf

Several things I would ask myself if I were to enter the Chinese Market,

Is there enough fix income instruments for me to construct a meaningful portfolio for the market? or should I basically create a portfolio largely composes of US fix income products? What if the company experiences something like what we have now (China is booming and US is slowing)?

Is healthcare costly enough for an ordinary Chinese to purchase insurance to protect their financial asset? Is it make sense to sell an insurance product to cover preventive care that costs <100 Chinese dollar for a family making 4-5k per month (I assume people who buy healthcare insurance in China are upper class people)? What would the profit margin for such a product? Is it make sense when you convert the profit back to USD or Euro?

Is there enough incentive for Chinese to buy life insurance given their high saving rate? Will Chinese economy evolves to a lower saving rate economy (more like US and Europe) to make life insurance meaningful? How long it would take to get to that level? Or is it possible given its culture?

I do understand that insurance industry is growing rapidly in China. However, it takes the right economic development to make the market profitable. I am not saying this is not going to happen in the future, just that I don't see it NOW.

DWsimpson, if you happen to have the data with you, I would be interested to know the global insurance premium break down by region (especially Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Korea and HongKong as % in total). This can kind of tell where the big bucks is coming from. Thanks in advance!

[eagle_halo]

OK, I just found something that is truly interesting,

http://www.swissre.com/resources/e64...rld%202006.pdf

This is a report by Swiss Re about world premium in year 2006. If you cannot connect to the link above, it should be the second hit when you search "world insurance premium" in google.

Anyway, go to page 15. Thats exactly what I am trying to look up.

As you can see, even for developed Asian economies like South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, they are not spending a parallel per capita amount in insurance compare to their western counter part. I, for one, think it is related to the Asian culture and the relative higher saving rate. Government sponsorship also plays a role there too.

Since there are more than 1.3 billion population in China, there is always argument that it is better to make one dollar on everyone in China than making two dollar on everyone in US.

[D.W. Simpson Webmaster]

Originally Posted by eagle_halo

DWsimpson, if you happen to have the data with you, I would be interested to know the global insurance premium break down by region (especially Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Korea and HongKong as % in total). This can kind of tell where the big bucks is coming from. Thanks in advance!

Start on page 10, .pdf file: http://www.asialink.unimelb.edu.au/_...Owen160506.pdf

Also see http://www.iisonline.org/pdf/Ishihara.pdf

[D.W. Simpson Webmaster]

Appears you've found what you were looking for.