Great Eastern Holdings has reported its first quarter financial results for 2022, revealing a 6% increase to its operating profit from insurance business compared to the same quarter last year. This puts the company’s operating profit at $191.4 million, which group chief executive officer Khor Hock Seng said is an indication of “good growth momentum.”
The Q1 results also showed that the company’s profit attributable to shareholders fell by half to $220 million from the $437.6 million reported in the first quarter of 2021. Great Eastern said this decrease to lower valuation of investments coming from “less favourable financial market conditions” during the first quarter of this year.
The company’s total weighted new sales, meanwhile, went up by 32% to S$505.3 million. The report characterised this increase as having been driven by the growth in the company’s Singapore operations, particularly its agency and bancassurance channels.
Additionally, Great Eastern’s new business embedded value registered a slight 3% decrease, falling to S$191.3 compared to the S$198.2 reported in Q1 of 2021. This was due to “weaker economic sentiments” in Malaysia, leading to lower contribution.
“The group’s performance continues to be resilient despite the challenging business environment and volatile capital and financial markets,” Khor said. “In the near term, the business landscape will remain challenging. Nonetheless, it remains critical that we continue to strengthen our reach and harness customer insights to innovate product solutions and transform customer experience. With this strong customer focus, we will be able to offer product propositions that are targeted at addressing our customers’ evolving needs.”
