By Reuters | October 23, 2018<\/p>\n
FWD Group, led by Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li, will buy control of an Indonesian life insurance venture from Commonwealth Bank of Australia for A$426 million (US$300 million) as it seeks to expand across Asia.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The transaction is the latest of several in Southeast Asia’s insurance sector with buyers lured by lower insurance penetration levels and robust growth rates for insurance premiums.<\/p>\n
The deal was hotly contested. At least five insurers, including Britain’s Prudential and Canada’s Sun Life had bid for CBA’s 80% stake in the Indonesian insurance unit, PT Commonwealth Life, sources have said.<\/p>\n
FWD has also agreed to buy HSBC Holdings Plc’s stake in a Malaysian insurance joint venture, sources familiar with the matter said in August.<\/p>\n
The two deals will add to businesses in Singapore, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam as well as FWD’s home market.<\/p>\n
CBA’s sale of its 80% stake comes as most big Australian banks, under intense scrutiny from a powerful inquiry into misconduct in the country’s financial sector, streamline their operations to focus on lending.<\/p>\n
“The transaction aligns with CBA’s strategy to focus on its core banking businesses and to create a simpler and better bank,” the bank said in a statement on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
CBA said the deal valued the Indonesian entity at three times its book value as of June 30. It added that its Indonesian banking business PT Bank Commonwealth would enter a 15-year life insurance distribution partnership with FWD.<\/p>\n
Other insurance deals in Indonesia include Zurich Insurance’s plan to acquire an 80% stake in Indonesia’s Adira Insurance from PT Bank Danamon Indonesia and a minority investor for at least around US$414 million.<\/p>\n
FWD is moving closer to a stock market listing, plans for which were in early stage and likely to be worked out over the next two years, sources said last month.<\/p>\n
(US$1 = 1.4142 Australian dollars)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Reuters | October 23, 2018 FWD Group, led by Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li, will buy control of an Indonesian life insurance venture from Commonwealth Bank of Australia for A$426 million (US$300 million) as it seeks to expand across Asia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"off","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,10,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-hk","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133,"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions\/133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}