Tokio Marine Insurance Group is aiming to earn roughly half of its profits from overseas business this year, with emerging markets like Thailand as the main contributors.
The Japan-based insurer expects to achieve this year’s target of THB7.41 billion (US$237 million) in life insurance premiums in Thailand, or an 11% year-on-year increase, according to a report by the Bangkok Post.
According to Noboru Yamagata, first vice-president of Tokio Marine Holdings, the group will employ three strategies to achieve its overseas profit target: business diversification, technology adoption to restructure business, and building a core identity to strengthen management.
In 2002, overseas business contributed a mere 3% to Tokio Marine’s profits, but the saturation and stagnation of Japan’s insurance industry has led it, along with its domestic competitors, to increasingly turn to international markets.
The group will focus more on emerging markets, especially in Asia, the report said. Last year, it acquired the Thailand and Indonesia insurance businesses of Insurance Australia Group (IAG), which includes Safety Insurance of Thailand. Safety was recently merged with Tokio Marine Insurance Thailand, the group’s general insurance division.
According to Yamagata, the emerging-market profit ratio is expected to double to 20% in 2019.
Meanwhile, Tokio Marine Life Insurance Thailand said that it will achieve its target of THB7.41 billion (US$237 million) in total premiums with the help of its strong agency channel. Somphot Keitkarival, the life insurer’s deputy chief executive, revealed that the agency channel’s first-year premiums surged 182% in the first four months of 2019.
