Manulife keen on life business of Takaful

KUALA LUMPUR: Life insurer Manulife Insurance (Malaysia) Bhd is keen on the life side of the Takaful business, says Manulife’s president and chief executive officer Peter Robertson.

“We are interested in the Takaful market. Our interest is on the life side... family takaful… not the general takaful. This is because Manulife is a life insurer and not a general insurer,” Peter pointed out.

Speaking to reporters here yesterday, Peter said Manulife is not in talks for any Takaful businesses at the moment and they recognise that there are no new licences for Takaful at the moment. “But if one comes available, Takaful will be a subsidiary of the holding company, not the life company,” he added.

Manulife is currently undergoing a restructuring which will see it re-listing itself as Manulife Holdings Bhd. This means, the company is able to move into other areas of financial services, other than just conducting an insurance business.

“The key reason for us to restructure is to enable us to move into other sectors other than just life insurance,” said Peter.

On the outlook for the life insurance business, Peter reckons it’ll be good. “I can’t give you numbers but the sentiment for 2008 is good. We are pretty confident for the year ahead. We have a variety of plans in place. The re-listing and restructuring at the moment is a key issue for us to go through this year,” he said.

“We believe we will be among the best placed companies when risk-based capital comes in at the start of 2009. We have a variety of product developments that we have, which should take us into new markets and segments as well as bring in innovative products to Malaysia,” he added.

The new segment and product that Peter was talking about included an income product for post retirement, in which he described as a segment not well served in Malaysia at the moment.

For its financial year ended Dec 31, 2007, Manulife recorded a 68% growth in net profit to RM85 million compared to the year before. Its basic earnings per share also jumped 68% to 42 sen per share.