Hong Kong’s Insurance Authority will appoint a new chief executive this month, and Clement Cheung Wan-ching, former Commissioner of Insurance, has emerged as a top candidate for the position, sources have revealed.
Fifty-six-year-old Cheung is leading the prospective names to head up the recently instituted insurance regulator given his experience as commissioner from 2006 to 2009, reported the South China Morning Post. During his tenure, the Hong Kong insurance sector was able to weather the global financial crisis. Prior to being Commissioner of Insurance, he had been Hong Kong’s Postmaster General and Commissioner of Customs and Excise. From 2015 to 2017, he was Secretary for the Civil Service.
The Insurance Authority was created in 2017 to replace the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance in order to create a more powerful and flexible organisation to oversee Hong Kong’s insurance industry. Cheung was one of those who contributed in forming the Insurance Authority.
The outgoing chief executive of the Insurance Authority, John Leung Chi-yan, will end his one-year term on June 25. Leung has expressed his desire to return to government.
If appointed as chief executive, Cheung will oversee the creation of guidelines for issuing insurance licences in the territory as well as regulating over 100,000 agents and brokers. He will also supervise the emergence of online insurance in Hong Kong, with over 40 companies having expressed interest in obtaining online insurance licences from the regulator.
In the face of AIG’s struggles during the financial crisis in 2008, Cheung took action and limited the effect on close to two million Hong Kong policyholders by banning AIA, then AIG’s local unit, from transferring any money to its parent company without approval. AIA later separated from AIG and is now listed in Hong Kong.
