Chinatrust Life Insurance Co (中信人壽) aims to become Taiwan’s top retirement insurance provider in four years, senior executives said yesterday.
The company was the local unit of New York-based MetLife Inc, which was acquired by Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控) last year and then renamed.
“The company will create its niche around provisions of wealth management and retirement insurance products,” chief executive Frank Ling (凌氤寶) told a media briefing.
Toward that end, the life insurer will take advantage of Chinatrust Commercial Bank’s (中國信託商銀) sales channel and enter a strategic partnership with local insurance brokers and agencies, Ling said.
With 146 branches nationwide, Chinatrust Commercial Bank is the nation’s largest bancassurance provider and will lend critical support in advancing Chinatrust Life’s ambitions, Ling said.
The insurer has no intention of building its own team of sales agents like Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽) or Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽), but will seek to maintain its leadership in the telemarketing arena, Ling said.
Chinatrust Financial delivered the acquisition on Nov. 1 and has retained all of MetLife Taiwan Insurance Co’s (大都會人壽) 620 employees with a promise to maintain their current benefits and compensation for at least two years.
It has also pledged to honor the terms of 1 million existing insurance policies.
For the coming two years, Chinatrust Life will first focus on boosting competiveness and synergy benefits, Ling said.
To facilitate compensation claims, the insurer will team up with 7-Eleven convenience stores and express-delivery companies, as well as developing Internet and automatic teller services, he said.
“The company will soon unveil new insurance policies featuring technology innovations,” Ling said.
He declined to comment on first-year premium targets or staff size, after increasing it to the present 710, on concerns this might affect the parent company’s ongoing capital increase scheme.
Chinatrust Life chairman Scott Chien (簡松棋) said the company would take its social responsibilities seriously and encourage employees to support community service activities.
“There is no shortcut to winning customers except being genuinely caring, professional and reliable,” Chien said. “Chinatrust Life will treat customers as its own family and work steadily toward the goal of being the best insurer in 2015.”
Despite global economic uncertainty, first-year premiums rose to a five-year high of NT$1.4 billion (US$46.26 million) last month, jumping 81.82 percent from NT$770 million in November, Chien said.
Chinatrust Financial, the nation’s third-largest financial services provider by assets, bought 100 percent of the shares in MetLife’s local unit for US$180 million with the aim of expanding into the life insurance market in Taiwan and China.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to