"What keeps me going are my clients. All my clients became my friends; and that's what makes me stronger." Lili Lim, an insurance agent in Jakarta, has been in the Indonesia insurance business for over 10 years, experiencing market-specific ups and downs such as the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the 1998 Indonesian government political crisis along the way.
The first couple of months of the financial crisis, Lili recalled, were indeed difficult, as many policyholders lapsed on their US dollar-pegged insurance contracts. However, some Indonesians also cashed in their US dollar accounts and signed new contracts. The economy, and the insurance business, eventually picked up and that incident is but a memory to Lili. Since the financial crisis, the Indonesian industry has moved away from US dollar contracts to local currency policies.
