Etiqa Insurance and Takaful chief strategy officer Chris Eng Poh Yoon
KUALA LUMPUR: Malayan Banking Bhd
’s insurance and takaful arm Etiqa Insurance and Takaful remains hopeful of maintaining the growth momentum in the financial year ending Dec 31, 2024 (FY24) following commendable growth shown in the nine months ended Sept 30, 2024.
“Our topline will be quite positive, we are looking at the trend continuing into the fourth quarter, whatever we have seen in the first three quarters.
“For our bottomline (profit before tax), it will depend on many factors and we can’t commit to the bottomline.
“For the first nine months of this year, we are looking at high single digit or low double digits growth, between 8% to 11%,” its chief strategy officer Chris Eng Poh Yoon told StarBiz after Etiqa’s media luncheon here yesterday.
He said the catalysts for growth will be the turnaround of its regional operations, particularly in Indonesia while Cambodia will likely be profitable in 2026.
Eng added that growth will mainly be driven by its Malaysian motor and bancassurance businesses as well as digital platform.
He said the first half performance was strong due to positive investment income but uncertainties in August had somewhat dampened demand for life insurance policies.
“I am not sure if next year we will have a similar pattern,” he added.
For the nine months just ended, its gross written premiums (GWPs) rose 21.6% year-on-year (y-o-y) to RM10.1bil while pre-tax profit grew 10.8% to RM710.3mil.
In FY23, Etiqa posted a 3.6% y-o-y increase in GWPs to RM11.5bil while pre-tax profit surged 133.7% to RM1.1bil.
As for its regional business, Eng was hopeful its operations in the Philippines and Indonesia should be in the black soon.
“Our Philippines business has recovered since the last four or five months. So they should end the year with profits.
“Indonesia is still very borderline. So it’s a breakeven kind of thing. Not all the markets are profitable right now. In Cambodia, we only started 2020. So typically, insurance companies take seven to nine years to break-even,” Eng added.
Etiqa is also operating in Singapore, which is a profitable outfit.
Eng expected its operations in Singapore and the Philippines to start offering takaful products by first quarter 2025 after some initial delay.
Last year, Etiqa said it was set to enter the takaful markets in the Philippines and Singapore in the first half of 2024.
“In the Philippines, the regulator actually wanted to have it there since I started going to the Philippines in 2017. But it is the process of coming up with a framework,” Eng explained.
In January 2022, the Insurance Commission of the Philippines issued the baseline regulatory framework for takaful undertakings, permitting insurers to explore takaful windows. As for Singapore, Eng said Etiqa is exploring the reintroduction of takaful offerings there.
“The product we are offering is actually an investment-linked product in Singapore. We see there’s a right market for that because Singaporeans, many of them do look at insurance as investment instruments as well,” he said.
