Siam Samsung aims to become a top-10 player

The move is part of a bid to become one of the top 10 local life-insurance companies.

President and CEO Kang Yeon-hee said the company expected premiums of Bt900 million by year-end, up 12 per cent from last year.

"In the first six months of the year, sales increased 24 per cent. Agents' sales increased 6 per cent and bancassurance sales 65 per cent, making premiums in the first half Bt422 million, up 18 per cent year on year," he said.

The company is now ranked 19th in the industry.

"If the top 10 life-insurance companies grew 10 per cent a year, the company would have to grow 60-70 per cent annually over the next three years to achieve total premiums of Bt5 billion by the end of 2012," said Kang.

He said the company expected to adjust its premium structure in the next four or five years by raising the proportion of individual policyholders.

The company wants to raise their proportion from 22-23 per cent to 40 per cent while lowering that for bancassurance from 32-33 per cent to 30 per cent and for group insurance from 45 per cent to 30 per cent.

One strategy aimed at bringing this about has been to appoint a chief agency officer, who recruits new agents. Senior executive vice president and chief agency officer Naruemon Yaimoong said the company had 511 active full-time agents but only a few part-time agents and so wants to recruit new part-timers even if they have no experience.

She wants another 100 part-time agents to be recruited by year-end and expects the company to have at least 300 part-timers by the end of next year, bringing in first-year premiums of between Bt100 million and Bt150 million. Siam Samsung has targeted annual growth of 50 per cent for first-year premiums from this channel.

Siam Samsung has three major shareholders: the Saha Group (50 per cent), Siam City Bank (25 per cent) and Samsung Life (25 per cent).

It has 295,000 policyholders: 25,000 individual insurance, 70,000 bancassurance and 200,000 group insurance.