The market share of new business insurance premium in the first four months of this year recorded the rise of Manulife Vietnam Insurance Company (Manulife), which was expected to change in the last months of the year when businesses raced to complete their business plans for the whole year.
According to official data of the Administration of insurance supervision, insurance premium revenue of new operators the first four months 2020 was estimated at 10.012 trillion dong, increasing by 7.7 percent on the same period of 2019. However, compared the growth rate of the same period in 2018, the revenue of mining insurance premium in the first four months of this year was much lower (the growth rate of 20.4 percent in the first four months of 2019) mainly due to the influence of the Covid-19 epidemic.
In terms of the market share of each company, notably, Manulife had risen to hold the largest market share of new exploitation in the market thanks to the breakthrough of two main sales channels, which were agents and bancassurance. At the same time, other big names, like Bao Viet Insurance Company (Bao Viet), Prudential Insurance Vietnam Company (Prudential) or Dai-ichi Life Insurance Company of Vietnam (Dai-ichi), had hardly improved market share due to the restructuring process.
Specifically, the market share of Manulife reached 19.5%; followed by the life expectancy of Bao Viet with 17.8%; Prudential 13%; AIA Vietnam Life Insurance Limited Company (AIA) and Dai-ichi are both 12%.
In the outbreak of Covid-19, the new exploitation market share of life enterprises would hardly change in the first six months of 2020, although there were no official data.
This partly explained that the market share of total premium revenue in the first four months of the year had not changed much. In particular, Bao Viet occupied 24 percent of the market share, followed by Prudential with 18.6%; Manulife Vietnam holds 16%, AIA Vietnam and Dai-ichi Vietnam both reached 11.5%.
However, this picture was forecasted to have significant changes in the last quarter of the year, when all insurance companies entered the sprint race to complete their 2020 plan. The change might be unique at the top of the rank when the market was buzzing about a big merger and acquisition (M&A) deal.
Vietnam’s life insurance market had changed sharply over the past 10 years. Explicitly, in 2011 when Prudential was the No.1 life insurance company with 37.5 percent market share of the total premium revenue of the whole market, significantly larger than the following businesses such as Bao Viet which accounted for 28.2 percent of the market share or Manulife Vietnam holding 11.1 percent (according to the Vietnam Insurance Association PV). So far, the market share and the ranking position of the insurance companies had been very different. Therefore, the rankings above would change by the end of this year, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of a life insurance company believed.
In fact, growing and expanding market share had always been an essential strategy for insurance companies. However, the phenomenon of fierce competition for market share had not appeared much in recent years.
The change in market share at this stage mostly came from the breakout efforts of the under-tier enterprises, as well as the slowdown of a few top companies after a period of intensive growth.
Although there was still much work to be done to continue to conquer and truly gain the trust of customers, it must also be acknowledged that, over the past time, insurance companies had changed their operating strategy towards practice. Some invested much in improving service and customer experience.
Insurance was inherently a human field, so targeting customers was natural. On the other hand, being first in terms of quality showed both the position and the responsibility of a life insurance company to its customers, admitted the CEO of an insurance company.
