SUN Life of Canada (Philippines) Inc. (SLOCPI) said it expects its client base to grow at around 20 percent annually to meet its Rise PH goal of having 5 million clients by the year 2020, fueled by its financial-literacy programs, among others.
SLOCPI President Alexander S. Narciso said the company is well on its way to meeting its Rise PH goal of having 5 million clients by 2020, pointing out that as of end-June SLOCPI has already 3.6 million clients. He explained that SLOCPI had around 3 million clients during the close of 2017.
“I’m happy to announce that at the end of this particular first half of 2018 we are already at 3.6 million, so we are trending very well toward achieving the 5 million and we are happy about that. It’s doing great,” Narciso told the BusinessMirror at the sidelines of the Brighter World Builders Challenge Awards of the Sun Life Financial-Philippines Foundation Inc. (Sun Life Foundation) on Thursday at the F1 Hotel in Taguig City.
Based on data from the Insurance Commission (IC), SLOCPI has reported total premium income of P32.114 billion for 2017, ranking first among the life insurance companies in the country for the year. The company sustained its leadership for the seventh consecutive year with its total premium income inching up by 0.7 percent from the P31.890 billion recorded in 2016.
“I think by growing maybe 20 percent plus in terms of number of clients per year will already get us to that 5 million [clients]. Of course, we are aiming for much higher,” he added.
To further financial inclusion in the country, SLOCPI continues to mount various financial-literacy programs, one of which is the Brighter World Builders Challenge through the Sun Life Foundation partnering with the Spark Project.
The campaign aims to search for, fund and accelerate financial-literacy initiatives nationwide, with the goal of helping more Filipinos manage their funds well. Out of 49 project applications, Sun Life Foundation awarded 10 proposals providing a grant of P100,000 to further their respective projects, as well as crowd-funding support from the Spark Project.
“Well, this is targeted more to the marginalized segments, which are not really the main clientele of companies like us. But the way I would view it is for the future, assuming our financial literacy projects take off, I think a number of the beneficiaries of these projects will end up to be middle class and therefore they become potential clients of ours. So it’s not a primary objective but I can anticipate that there might be some benefits along that line. But that’s not the main objective; it’s really more of trying to help regardless of whether they become clients or whether they buy from us. It’s not a question that we pose,” he said.
SLOCPI’s Rise PH program, launched in June 2016, targets to increase the company’s client base to 5 million by 2020.
In May the IC reported that the life insurance industry posted a growth of 40.187 percent in terms of total premiums collected in the first quarter of this year amounting to P61.79 billion, coming from the P44.08 billion recorded in end-March 2017.
The life insurance sector growth helped push the total premium growth of the whole insurance industry in the first quarter by double-digit, increasing by 34.38 percent to P76.64 billion, from the P57.04 billion it posted during the same period in 2017.