LEADING preneed company Eternal Plans celebrates 27 years in the industry by launching a new life plan, intended to help boost sales by 20 percent this year.

The company, founded by business leader Ambassador Antonio L. Cabangon Chua in March 1981, will hold its Grand Annual Awards for top sales producers on March 5 at Dusit Hotel Nikko in Makati and a Thanksgiving Mass two days later, March 7.

In a statement, Elmer M. Lorica, president and chief operating officer, said that for 27 years, Eternal Plans has served thousands of planholders, their scholars and beneficiaries, providing educational or retirement funds and/or cash for dignified memorial services.

“No one has regretted getting a plan with us. And their gratitude inspires us to do even much better,” Lorica said.

Recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved Eternal Plans’ MaxLife, a fixed value- life plan that provides memorial service or cash benefits to planholders. It guarantees a fund for memorial services that grows for every year that it remains unused.

Lorica said life plan products have changed over the years, but the concept remains the same. Everybody wants decent and dignified memorial service for themselves and their loved ones. The enhanced assignment feature of MaxLife makes the plan benefits available not only to the planholder but to every member of the family.

Eternal Plans is one of the few pre-need companies that offer the three main play types of the preneed industry—life, education and pension.

In sales campaigns held early this year, the company projected a 20-percent sales growth in 2008, citing a study on the performance of preneed companies in 2006 that noted Eternal Plans’ increased market share even as other preneed companies lost theirs to multi-national preneed companies.

Eternal Plans has 41 branches in major cities nationwide.

For the convenience of its planholders, it has forged tie-ups with collecting banks (Citystate Savings Bank, Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation and Planters Bank), Bayad Center, BDO On Site payment facility and RCBC Telemoney.

PAL Holdings Inc., the entity which controls Philippine Airlines (PAL), said earnings fell by more than three-fourths after it paid US-based Boeing Co. some $63 million as part of a program to acquire new aircraft.

Eternal Plans inaugurates new product

LEADING preneed company Eternal Plans celebrates 27 years in the industry by launching a new life plan, intended to help boost sales by 20 percent this year.

NETWORK Appliance Inc. (NetApp), a network storage and data management company, will soon widen its product presence in the Philippines by appointing Wordtext Systems Inc. (WSI), the country’s leading software and hardware vendor, as its sole distributor.

ETON Properties Philippines Inc. (EPPI), the listed real-estate arm of the Lucio Tan group, has created a new vehicle called Belton Communities Inc. to serve low- to middle-income homebuyers.

THE Philippine Stock Exchange Index lost 9.62, or 0.3 percent to 3,181.05 at the close in Manila, declining for the fourth time in five days. The following are among the most active stocks in the Philippine market Wednesday.

The Lopez-owned Red Vulcan Holdings Corp. paid P58.50 billion in acquiring through public bidding in November last year 15 billion common shares,