Shopee launches insurance business in Philippines
30 June 2022
Forrest Li, a Singaporean businessman and owner of the massive online retailer Shopee launches the insurance market as a new participant in both the life and non-life insurance sectors.
The Insurance Commission (IC) has given SeaInsure General Insurance Co. permission to operate. Inc., which Li owns, to function as a non-life insurer in the nation.
Similarly, The STAR was informed by IC Commissioner Dennis Funa that the authority is processing SeaInsure’s application for a license to provide life insurance.
Funa claims that SeaInsure has raised at least P2.6 billion in new capital to meet the Insurance Code’s advance capital requirements. He said that the insurer’s life and non-life segments could both meet the impending capitalization modifications.
SeaInsure describes itself as a brand-new digital insurance company with headquarters in Taguig City’s Bonifacio Global City on its website. At a time when insurance technology is becoming more popular among Filipinos, the company aims to become the top digital insurer in the Philippines.
As of June, SeaInsure only offered one policy, dubbed Credit Protection, which the insurer described as a safety net against unexpected debt pressure. This will Shopee launches this insurance.
Funa claimed that the addition of SeaInsure increased the range of options available to Filipinos when choosing the insurance solutions that best meet their requirements.
Despite SeaInsure’s recent entry into the Philippine market, he claimed that customers may trust its financial stability. The Sea Group, which runs the online store Shopee and the payment platforms SeaMoney and Garena, manages the business.
When he listed Sea Group on the New York Stock Exchange in 2017, Li, the company’s founder, climbed into the top echelons of Singapore’s wealthiest people. Following that, Li’s company received funding from a number of global corporations, including private equity firm General Atlantic and media giant Tencent.
Li is the 509th richest person in the world according to the Forbes World’s Billionaires List with a net worth of $5.3 billion.
The Sea Group has declared for the year that it intends to broaden its reach throughout Southeast Asia in an effort to enter the digital realm and provide insurance products there.
According to a May Financial Times article, the Sea Group is considering buying Indonesian insurer Asuransi Mega Pratama as part of a plan to sell insurance products online in a few key regions.
For its part, SeaInsure has advanced far beyond some of its rivals who are battling to increase their capital to P1.3 billion. The Insurance Code requires insurers to increase their capitalization to that level by 2022 in order to give consumers more assurance that they will be able to pay their financial claims.
Just 23 of the 52 non-life providers in the Philippines, according to the IC, had reached the P1.3 billion threshold as of September 2021. On the other hand, at least 19 of the country’s 31 life insurance companies have met the P1.3 billion annual threshold.
By 2023, insurance companies should be in a strong financial position to meet the needs of the insured public, according to Funa, thanks to the statutory net worth criteria.
As more Filipinos were aware of the value of storing money for potential catastrophes like the pandemic, the insurance industry began to show signs of expansion in the preceding quarters.
As a result of Filipinos increasing their average spending on insurance goods to P2,528.65 from P1,989.94 throughout the course of the period, Shopee launches insurance grew to a record 2.03 percent as of September 2021, up from 1.69 percent in September 2020.
