By Asia Asset Management | March 2, 2018<\/p>\n
German insurer Allianz Group (Allianz) says it has received regulatory approval to sell part of the life insurance portfolio of its Taiwanese subsidiary, Allianz Taiwan Life (AZTL), to China Life Insurance Company (China Life).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Allianz and Taipei-headquartered China Life reached an agreement for the deal last October. The price was not disclosed. The portfolio to be sold includes approximately 78,000 policies with a guaranteed interest rate of at least 4%, and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) reserves of 1.2 billion euros (US$1.46 billion),<\/p>\n
Allianz says the deal has been approved by Taiwan\u2019s financial regulator, and is expected to close on May 18.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis announcement does not affect the operations or ongoing business of Allianz Taiwan Life in any way,\u201d Allianz says in a statement on February 27.<\/p>\n
AZTL, which was established in 1995, is one of the largest multinational life insurers in Taiwan. Last year, its revenues grew 50% from 2016 to NT$84.2 billion ($2.87 billion).<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not clear how many life policies AZTL will hold after the sale; Allianz did not respond to questions from Asia Asset Management (AAM).<\/p>\n
According to Allianz, the deal will have a \u201cpositive impact\u201d on the group\u2019s Solvency II capital position, and supports the management of its \u201ccapital-efficient solution offering in Taiwan\u201d.<\/p>\n
Solvency II is the European Union directive that stipulates the amount of capital European insurers must hold to reduce the risk of insolvency.<\/p>\n
Frank Yuen, assistant vice president of the financial institutions group at Moody\u2019s Investors Service Hong Kong Ltd, tells AAM that it makes sense for Allianz to trim its Taiwan business.<\/p>\n
\u201cAllianz mainly operates high guarantee rate insurance products, which requires a relatively high cash requirement for underwriting. As such, the sale [of the high guarantee products] will strengthen its cash position to meet the Solvency II requirements,\u201d Mr. Yuen says.<\/p>\n
Several other foreign insurers have sold their Taiwan subsidiaries to local players in recent years, including New York-based AIG Group and Netherlands-based Aegon.<\/p>\n
According to Mr. Yuen, it\u2019s difficult for foreign insurers to develop a presence in the Taiwan market because their products do not dovetail with local demand. He expects more foreign players to exit the market.<\/p>\n
Allianz had 901.3 billion euros in total assets as at December 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Asia Asset Management | March 2, 2018 German insurer Allianz Group (Allianz) says it has received regulatory approval to sell part of the life insurance portfolio of its Taiwanese subsidiary, Allianz Taiwan Life (AZTL), to China Life Insurance Company (China Life).<\/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":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-taiwan"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71","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=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72,"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurance.vincent-chen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}