{"id":149184,"date":"2018-01-26T23:13:23","date_gmt":"2018-01-27T04:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=149184"},"modified":"2018-01-26T23:13:23","modified_gmt":"2018-01-27T04:13:23","slug":"tax-reform-to-benefit-insurance-industry-ic-commissioner-funa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/01\/26\/tax-reform-to-benefit-insurance-industry-ic-commissioner-funa\/","title":{"rendered":"Tax reform to benefit insurance industry : IC commissioner Funa"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\u201cIf<\/a>
\u201cIf they will have a bigger take home pay they will be planning for the future for their families or children and the micro sector is just there waiting for these wage earners,\u201d he said. (Photo by Smartmae8 – Own work, CC BY 3.0)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA \u2014 Insurance Commissioner Dennis Funa is optimistic of the impact of the first package of tax reform on the insurance industry since people will have additional disposable income.<\/p>\n

Funa in a briefing Friday, said people would have more capacity to buy microinsurance with the implementation of the\u00a0 first package of the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law this year, which gives workers\u2019 first PHP250,000 annual income a tax free rate,<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they will have a bigger take home pay they will be planning for the future for their families or children and the micro sector is just there waiting for these wage earners,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Data released by the Insurance Commission (IC) Friday showed that mutual benefit associations (MBA), where bulk of the entities that sell microinsurance belong, posted an 11.57 percent rise in total assets last year to PHP77.47 billion.<\/p>\n

MBAs\u2019 premiums totaled to PHP8.74 billion in 2017, up 16.89 percent from the previous year\u2019s PHP7.48 billion.<\/p>\n

Funa declined to give any numbers for the possible expansion of microinsurance sales this year but cited that to date there are around 32 million Filipinos who have microinsurance.<\/p>\n

He said the poor are starting to realize the necessity of having insurance and slowly embracing the opportunities to get one for themselves.<\/p>\n

This is where microinsurance comes in, he said, \u201cbecause microinsurance makes insurance coverage more affordable.\u201d<\/p>\n

He noted that \u201cit\u2019s really difficult for big companies to sell micro because you have to go down to the barrios (municipalities).\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThe group that can really go down the barrios are the coops (cooperatives) and the MBAs that\u2019s why the bulk of the sales of micro (insurance companies) are those sold by MBAs because they have a captive market,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only threat that I see in both the life and nonlife sector I would say a catastrophic incident, like (Typhoon) Yolanda or (Typhoon) Ondoy or an earthquake that will impact greatly on the nonlife sector,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is why we have the DOF (Department of Finance) having these initiatives on catastrophic insurance and we are working together with the DOF on these,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The insurance industry\u2019s total assets rose by 17.89 percent\u00a0 to PHP1.55 trillion in 2017 and premiums by 11.97 percent to PHP259.65 billion. (PNA)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA \u2014 Insurance Commissioner Dennis Funa is optimistic of the impact of the first package of tax reform on the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":149190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[44880,44878,44879],"class_list":["post-149184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-ic-commissioner-funa","tag-insurance-commissioner-dennis-funa","tag-insurance-industry","mauthors-joann-villanueva","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}