Insurance Market In Asia - Maturing Markets Going Strong

Insurance Market In Asia

President Wu Chia-lu looked across the table at the young man sitting opposite him. "Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked. The head on the other side nodded in agreement. Wu continued, "I want you to go home first, and think about this carefully for a few days. If you still haven't changed your mind, then you can come to work. Law graduates from National Taipei University like you usually don't want to join our insurance industry." The year was 1964, and Frank Cheng was applying for a job at Shin Kong Life Insurance, a small subsidiary of the large Shin Kong conglomerate that made its fortune in garments and textile.

Frank ended up joining Shin Kong, and witnessed the growth of the tiny company into the second-largest insurance company in Taiwan with over US$30 billion in assets and over 12,000 flail-time sales agents by 2008. He ended his career as the President of Shin Kong Financial Holdings, and devoted his professional life to building the life insurance company. During his memorial service, Wu (who became the vice-chairman of the Shin Kong Financial Holding Company) fondly remembered all the ups and downs that Frank led the company through, which in many ways reflected the economic ups and downs of Taiwan. Compared to the 1960s, when attracting people to work in the industry was difficult, the challenges faced by Shin Kong today are quite different. Competing in a much more mature market, Shin Kong has expanded beyond domestic life insurance, starting overseas operations in China, and investing over 35 percent of its assets overseas.