CATHAY Financial Holdings Co. Ltd. looks to expand its market for insurance products in the Philippines.
Cathay Financial President Chang-Ken Lee said they have visited life insurers around the world and realized that in the Philippines the life-insurance market is still very small.
Cathay Financial, through its flagship insurer, Cathay Life Insurance, aims to expand its business in the Philippines following its acquisition of 20-percent equity of the local lender Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC).
“With RCBC, we can know the market better. Definitely we have the interest and may explore possibilities for insurance business. The size of the life-insurance [business] and market penetration here is very much small,” Lee told the BusinessMirror.
“We are the largest mutual fund company in Taiwan. We have joint ventures in China, in Hong Kong and we recently acquired an asset management firm in the US,” he said.
Its recent acquisition in the US should help Cathay set up its global business platform.
“For life insurance, the market here is still very small. At this stage, we will explore more opportunities for insurance business,” he said.
Lee said the deal with RCBC is expected to be completed within the first quarter next year.
The partnership with Cathay allows RCBC to tap into Cathay’s significant expertise in retail and consumer banking as Cathay United Bank (CUB), a wholly owned subsidiary of Cathay Financial, has one of the leading retail and consumer banking franchises in Taiwan.
CUB is also a leading mortgage lender to high net-worth customers in Taiwan and the second largest issuer of credit cards.
The partnership with Cathay is expected to be significantly beneficial to RCBC’s strategy of expanding its lending in the consumer- banking segment.