The insurer, which now ranks third, aims to cover another 800,000 Thai families by year-end from the current 1.2 million, president Wilf Blackburn said last week.

Blackburn said the firm projected at least a doubling of first-year premiums.

AACP last year posted Bt3.3 billion in such premiums, up 5 per cent from Bt3.1 billion in 2005. Its renewal premiums came in at Bt14.5 billion.

Hit by sales agents' protests and blemished equity investment years ago, the insurer faced an accumulative loss of more than Bt1 billion.

Blackburn, put in charge two and a half years ago, reorganised the company's structure. In 2005 AACP managed to generate Bt900 million profit for the first time. It recorded an accumulative loss of Bt528 million in 2004. Last year it managed Bt1.06 billion of profit before tax and was able to pay dividends to its shareholders.

"The profit was an equal balance of underlying operating

and investment profits. Our

profit tends to be stable. We don't try to make much profit from

each policy; we rather focus on the sales volume," Blackburn said.

He added that his company's equity-investment portfolio had gone from 6 per cent to 10 per cent, and the total investment portfolio was Bt68 billion.

"On December 19 we saw an opportunity for equity investment. Then on the next day our decision about it was right," he said.

It now has a Bt3.12-billion reserve, 160 per cent higher than required by the Insurance Department.

Although 70 per cent of AACP's sales volume comes from sales representatives, the insurer will also seek to expand bancassurance through GE Capital.

Bruce Bowers, CEO of Allianz Asia, said the insurer would work closely with GE Capital and hopes the latter's expertise in retail will help AACP expand through bancassurance. Allianz Group has a similar cooperation with GE Capital on bancassurance in India and Indonesia.

Piyarat Setthasiriphaiboon

 The Nation