Life insurers’ first-year premiums (FYPs) continued to fall in January, but the pace of decline slowed from previous months, helped by sales of investment-linked products, the Life Insurance Association said in a report on Feb. 19.
FYPs fell 14 percent year-on-year to NT$78.19 billion (US$2.76 billion), following an annual decrease of 28.76 percent last year, the report said.
The market share of investment-linked policies climbed to 43.5 percent, from 17.5 percent a year earlier, with FYPs advancing 113.6 percent to NT$34.04 billion, the report said, adding that the increase reflected rallying stock markets, which boosted investors’ interest in such products.
Photo: Taipei Times
Traditional life insurance policies continued to dominate the market, but their market share fell from 82.5 percent a year earlier to 56.5 percent, with FYPs plunging 41.2 percent to NT$44.15 billion, the report said.
The association attributed the decline to insurers cutting declared interest rates and halting sales of unprofitable disability insurance products.
Traditional life insurance policies comprise of regular life insurance, accident insurance, health insurance and annuity insurance products.
In January, sales of regular life insurance products halved from a year earlier to NT$33.64 billion, but health insurance policies grew 5.5 percent to NT$3.98 billion, as consumers paid more attention to their health insurance coverage amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the report said.
Sales of accident insurance policies rose 2.5 percent in January and annuity insurance sales rose 34.3 percent, the report said.
The association said bancassurance continued to be the biggest sales channel for insurance products, generating NT$43.3 billion in FYPs and accounting for 55.37 percent of all FYPs in January, up from 51.61 percent for the whole of last year.
Salespeople were the second biggest channel, generating 36.22 percent of all FYPs, followed by insurance agents and brokers, with a combined market share of 8.41 percent, the report said.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
Intel Corp is joining Elon Musk’s long-shot effort to develop semiconductors for Tesla Inc, Space Exploration Technologies Corp and xAI, marking a surprising twist in the chipmaker’s comeback bid. Intel would help the Terafab project “refactor” the technology in a chip factory, the company said on Tuesday in a post on X, Musk’s social media platform. That is a stage in the development process that typically helps make chips more powerful or reliable. The chipmaker’s shares jumped 4.2 percent to US$52.91 in New York trading on Tuesday. The Terafab project is a grand plan by Musk to eventually manufacture his own chips for
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) yesterday said it plans to resume operations at two coal-fired power generators for three months to boost security of electricity supply as liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply risks are running high due to the Middle East conflict. The two coal-fired power generators are at Mailiao Power Plant in Yunlin County’s Mailiao Township (麥寮). The plant, operated by Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), supplied electricity to Taipower’s power grid until the end of last year. Taipower’s decision came about one month after Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) on March 10 said that the nation had no imminent
Some robotaxi passengers were left stranded in the middle of fast-moving traffic in a major Chinese city after their driverless vehicles stopped running, according to police and media reports on Wednesday. A preliminary investigation indicates more than 100 robotaxis came to a halt because of a “system malfunction,” police in the city of Wuhan said in a statement, without elaborating. No injuries were reported. One passenger told Chinese media that their robotaxi stopped after turning a corner. An instruction on a screen read: “Driving system malfunction. Staff are expected to arrive in 5 minutes.” After no one showed up, the passenger pushed
RSS