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VietNamNet Bridge – Most of the insurance companies which “join hands” with
foreign strategic partners are the “big cheeses”. Therefore, they do not aim to
have more capital when inviting foreigners’ cooperation, but they expect the
technology transfer.
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To date, four insurance companies have foreign partners, namely Bao Viet – the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation HSBC, Bao Minh – Axa, Vinare – Swiss Re and PVI – Talanx, Oman.
As such, foreign partners have only joined hands with the biggest Vietnamese insurers out of the current 30 non-life insurance companies.
In fact, many other insurance companies such as BIC, PTI, VNI and SVIC are still looking for foreign partners, while a lot of foreigners have shown their interests in making investment in Vietnamese insurers.
Deputy General Director of VNI Ta Chien has affirmed that a lot of foreign partners want to join hands with VNI, but it remains unclear when VNI will makes final decision on choosing partners, because this still depends on the management bodies.
The insurers who have “married” foreigners, are all big guys, holding strong brands. Therefore, they say that their cooperation has been going very smoothly. The foreign partners not only give capital support, but they also closely cooperate in training, help improve the corporate governance skills and increase the market share proportions.
President of PVI Nguyen Anh Tuan said that the Oman partner has given effective support since it became a partner of PVI, helping PVI penetrate the insurance market in the Middle East. Besides, it has also cooperated in technology, training and corporate governance.
Meanwhile, Hoang Viet Ha, the spokesman of Bao Viet Group, said that after the last four years of cooperation, the cooperation with HSBC has brought good effects in many fields, including the management and technology improvement, business strategy building, risk management, branding, insurance premiums policy building, product and distribution development, and banc assurance.
Ha said at present, some 15 experts from HSBC are working full time at Bao Viet, while some of them are holding key posts, such as IT director, risk management director, deputy personnel director
The support given by HSBC over the last four years plays a very important role which helps create a firm foundation for the development. Despite the economic difficulties, Bao Viet still has been obtaining high growth rate, while key business fields still maintain two-digit growth rates.
As for Bao Minh, a representative of the insurer said that the strategic cooperation between Bao Minh and Axa has been done well. Most recently, Bao Minh has set up a car compensation center in Hanoi. In fact, Axa has been successfully developing the model all over Europe and South East Asia. Besides, Bao Minh has put BEST, a software on operation management, into use which helps decrease the costs and increase the business efficiency.
Commenting about the cooperation between Vietnamese and foreign partners, Phung Dac Loc, Secretary General of the Association of Vietnamese Insurers AVI, said that the inner strength and the corporate governance skills have increased significantly with the cooperation with foreign partners, especially at Vinare, a re-insurer.
Swiss Re, the foreign partner of Vinare, has also expressed its satisfaction about the cooperation. Most recently, with the support from Swiss Re, Vinare has obtained initial results in the implementation of the plan on providing agriculture insurance.
In related news, non-life insurance companies are drawing up the business plan for 2012. The insurers have been warned about the big difficulties in 2012; therefore, they need to be cautious when setting up business targets. An insurer has revealed that his company set up an ambitious growth rate of 25 percent in 2011; therefore, a more modest growth rate of 5-10 percent would be set up for the next year.
Source: TBKTVN
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