Vincent Lepez, Deputy Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of SCOR Global Life Asia-Pacific, has suggested in a recent interview with A.M. BestTV that economic development across Asia is driving demand for further life insurance and reinsurance.
Speaking at the 18th Asia CEO Insurance Summit, Lepez cited population growth, rising middle classes, and more millennials as trends in many Asian countries that “create a whole range of opportunities for life-insurance and for life reinsurance to support the development of this industry”.
He also drew attention to aging populations in many areas of Asia, such as Japan, Korea, China and Hong Kong, which he suggests “are currently under-protected”, and which “will have a growing need for being protected.”
Moreover, Lepez pointed to the unrealized potential of the Asian re/insurance market more generally, noting that: “Asia is not where it should be in terms of overall reinsurance business opportunities. Asia is actually more than half of the world population, but in terms of overall market footprint it’s less than a third.”
Lepez dubbed Asia “the growth engine of the world as of today” and suggested that, even though the Asian life re/insurance industry has seen strong overall growth of 6-8% in recent years, there is “still a lot of potential for this to continue, and even potentially to accelerate, especially with the new type of offers that we can bring to the markets.”
The potential for the expansion of insurance and reinsurance participation across many parts of the Asia-Pacific region is viewed as both a huge challenge and opportunity for the risk transfer industry. But as noted by Lepez, economic growth across the region appears to generating increased demand for insurance and reinsurance solutions.
