The end of the financial year is when insurance companies change hot seats. New CEOs usually appear in the first half of the next year.
A leading life insurance company in Vietnam is about to have a new general director. The information has not been officially announced because it is still waiting for the approval of the Ministry of Finance. Notably, this new leader is the one that previously held the position of deputy general director and is Vietnamese.
Previously, in the first week of April, FWD Group announced that it had received the statutory approval for the acquisition of Vietcombank Cardif Life Insurance Company (VCLI) a joint venture between Commercial Joint Stock Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank) and BNP Paribas Cardif.
Accordingly, FWD will soon rename the newly acquired company and the official brand transformation will take place in the near future. This move, according to FWD, will not affect the interests of existing VCLI customers (as FWD will continue to take care of all VCLI insurance policies upon completion of the transaction).
The highlight of this deal, according to the reporter’s source, is that FWD does not merge VCLI but maintains a new independent legal entity of FWD, and certainly there will be a new leader for this insurance company.
According to information of Dau tu Chung khoan, in both life and non-life segments, there have not been too many changes in CEO and Chair positions. The Covid-19 pandemic is perhaps the cause of the plans’ postponement.
In the segment of non-life insurance, after many years of constantly changing senior positions, in March, PVI Insurance Corporation again replaced the Chair of the Member Board after the parent company PVI sold shares to foreign investors.
Duong Thanh Danh FRANCOIS (French nationality) replaced Bui Van Thuan as Chair of the Board of Members. Duong Thanh Danh Francois is currently the Asia Pacific director (excluding Japan) of HDI Global SE, and a member of the Board of directors (BOD) of PVI.
Meanwhile, at the Military Insurance Joint Stock Corporation (MIC), the CEO position is about to be soon revealed. MIC’s permanent deputy general director is Pham Trung Dung.
The changes in general director positions of insurance sector has mentioned by the press annually. There are no figures comparing with other sectors, but the information about “hot seats” with high frequency creates a sense of a heat in this sector’s CEO positions. The number of leaders holding Chair or CEO seats for more than 10 years is very rare.
Sharing with Dau tu Chung khoan, a former CEO of a non-life insurance company admitted that the pressure in terms of targets from the BOD is very huge. Meanwhile, since the market is not perfect and the competition is far below standard, many strategies outlined when taking up office are difficult to deploy.
Recruiting new members is one of the solution to maintain the growth rate of premium revenue and ensure market share, but there are consequences. For example, when the CEO leaves, he often goes along with his team which includes managers of the divisions, certainly making it difficult for business activities.
Some insurance companies which sees changes in CEO positions every one or two years. That raises concerns about the stability of the lower-level staff, as the personnel associated with the heyday of the previous period is almost gone to other companies.
Under the new CEO, the corporate culture is also changed. Some companies develop in a more positive direction while some others are downgraded with weak and lacking skill personnel.
A Chief representative office of a large insurance company said that with the policy of changing the organisational structure six years ago, many of the company’s senior staff have left. At the same time, there are new comers who are not qualified but still appointed to high positions. They have run the company emotionally and broken the previous cultural foundation. The leader added that, as a result, downgrading signs are obviously unavoidable.
