Manulife-Sinochem was created twenty years ago. It was the first foreign insurance joint venture in China.
Manulife Financial Corporation and Sinochem celebrated Manulife-Sinochem's twentieth birthday earlier this week. The company now operates in 51 cities and 14 provinces, with more than 13,000 employees and agents serving over 1 million clients.
The insurer has about 2 million policies in force and has paid 1.2 billion RMB in insurance claims since it was founded in 1996. Measured in terms of a total annualized premium equivalent (APE), Mainland China is Manulife's fourth largest source of business in the region.
Manulife-Sinochem notes that its has broken a lot of new ground over the last two decades. "In 2014, electronic point-of-sale ("ePOS") was launched and it is a comprehensive digital point-of-sales platform that reduces the amount of information needed and improves speed in underwriting claims. By Q3 2016, Agency uptake rate was 94%," reads a press release from the insurer.
Manulife expects to see more growth in Mainland China. The country is already one of the largest insurance markets in the world and has a current "protection gap" of about $18 trillion USD, and the insurer believes that may exceed $46 trillion USD by 2020. "Foreign insurers will have new opportunities with the reforms by the regulators to expand their business in China," concludes Manulife.
