China Post and French CNP Assurances announced the opening of
their life insurance joint venture last Friday.
The newly established Sino-French Life Insurance Co. Ltd is also
China's first insurance company invested in by the banking or
postal sector.
With a registered capital of 200 million yuan (US$24.9 million)
the joint venture is equally shared by China Post and French CNP
Assurances.
China's banking and postal sector is becoming an important
channel to distribute insurance products. Currently savings
business has accounted for half of China Post's total workload and
its income from post offices acting as insurance agents topped 22
billion yuan (US$2.7 billion)?last year.
Besides China Post some Chinese commercial banks including the
China Construction Bank, the Bank of China and the Bank of
Communications have also applied to the State Council to open
insurance business.
Han Liwen, vice general manager of the Sino-French Life
Insurance, said that during the first two months this year
insurance premiums collected by post offices as agents increased 90
percent year on last year to 6.36 billion yuan and the increase in
Beijing alone surged 123 percent.
According to Han, Sino-French Life Insurance will choose Beijing
first to sell its insurance products and China Post's 77,000 postal
outlets distributed across the country will become the new
company's sales network.
CNP Assurances is France's leading personal insurance company,
which shares about 10 percent of France's insurance market by
distributing its insurance products through French post office
network.
(Xinhua News Agency March 27, 2006)