Filipinos’ financial literacy improving: Sun Life exec

Sun Life Financial Philippines country head and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Benedict Sison said he is banking on Filipinos’ improved financial literacy to drive the company’s continued growth. (File Photo: Benedicto C. Sison/LinkedIn)

MANILA — Sun Life Financial Philippines country head and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Benedict Sison said he is banking on Filipinos’ improved financial literacy to drive the company’s continued growth.

In an interview Wednesday, Sison said that for this year alone their premium income rose by more than 20 percent, higher than the 18 percent growth of the industry.

He said that another major contributor to the firm’s growth was its focus on providing clients more options through their insurance and investment products, as well as better execution of their strategies to strengthen their distribution channel.

To date, the company has about 3.8 million clients and Sison said they are on-track to achieving their target of 5 million clients by end-2020.

He said increased financial literacy among Filipinos is the primary reason for the higher number of citizens who take insurance accounts with investments.

“That’s one key reason why Filipinos are becoming more aware of the benefits of being insured and are investing — the awareness has grown,” he said.

Citing government data as of 2017, Sison said insurance penetration rate in the country remains low compared to neighboring countries at around 1.2 percent of total output.

He said the penetration rate in neighboring Indonesia is nearly 2 percent and in Malaysia it is about 3.6 percent.

He, however, is optimistic that Philippines would be able to improve in less than five years as industry players continue to work on making Filipinos more investment conscious.

“We are working as an industry to increase the penetration rate and I’m very positive and hopeful that we’ll get there,” he said.

Insurance industry officials have partly attributed the growth of premium income in recent years to the continued expansion of the domestic economy.

Sison said this is very likely the case, citing the growing number of middle-income families and the large number of young professionals today.

“Our outlook for the next three years is very bullish, especially 2019,” he said, citing that although 2018 is a volatile year for the global economy the life insurance industry, for one, continued to grow.

“It’s not only related to the growing economic environment. It’s also related to the growing financial literacy. When you reach out to more Filipinos you just have to educate them,” he added.