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)