A-Life to sink Bt500m into 20-year investment fund
ADVANCE LIFE Assurance will shift an investment budget of Bt500 million from the money market and invest it in a new infrastructure fund in the hope it will provide a certain long-lasting return.
The company’s annual money-market return on investment is no more than 5 per cent and its return on investment from the infrastructure fund is expected to be 7-8 per cent during the fund’s 20-year life span.
The government said the infrastructure fund would be launched in the next four months.
A-Life managing director Chaowphan Phanthong said the company would this year increase its investment portfolio from Bt4.1 billion to Bt5 billion.
He said A-Life had expertise in giving investment advice to customers, not only selling traditional insurance policies, thanks to its commitment to achieving high returns for its policyholders.
It invested in what it predicted would generate certain and high returns.
Last year, the company earned a return of 5.93 per cent.
Chaowphan said the company wanted to expand its base of customers who used A-Life wealth management to increase its assets under management from Bt2 billion to Bt20 billion within three years.
A-Life manages the asset portfolios of about 4,000 of its some 140,000 customers and the rest are insurance-policy holders.
In a bid to expand the number of its customers it manages assets for, A-Life will launch investment-linked policies midyear.
Chaowphan said A-Life would encourage its existing customers who had an insurance policy to buy investment products, including other policies.
“We have given a target to our wealth assistants that a customer should make a decision on buying the second policy within six months,” he said.
The wealth assistants are the main distribution channel at A-Life. They have a have single licence enabling them to sell mutual-fund products from 13 asset-management companies.Chaowphan said the wealth assistants contributed about 60 per cent of the company’s new premium income and rest came from telesales and group life.
The company plans to increase the number of wealth assistants from 10 to 30.
Chaowphan said the wealth assistant’s main targets were men aged between 40 and 45, as this segment typically gave importance to financial planning and wealth accumulation to ensure they had sufficient money after retirement.
The company has targeted growth of 10 per cent for first-year premiums and total premium income this year, but last year its total premium income had flat growth because of fewer renewals, he said.
