Philamlife, BPI forge joint venture on bancassurance

Philamlife, BPI forge joint venture on bancassurance

The Philippine American Life and General Insurance Company (Philamlife), the largest life insurer in the Philippines, and Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) have agreed to enter a strategic bancassurance joint venture.

As a result, Philamlife has agreed to acquire a 51% stake in Ayala Life Assurance Inc. (Ayala Life), BPI’s life insurance subsidiary. Ayala Life will serve as the platform for BPI and Philamlife’s strategic bancassurance partnership.

The joint venture is expected to benefit from the combined synergies, first-class resources and strength of two leading companies in the Philippines’ financial industry.

Philamlife will bring insurance distribution, product development, and innovation to the joint venture, particularly in the area of bancassurance, while gaining exclusive access to BPI’s customer base via its extensive branch network. Philamlife’s President and CEO Trevor Bull said, “This partnership is a direct result of our strategy to focus on the core life insurance and wealth management business. Philamlife and BPI are strong and trusted brand names in the industry. This is an exciting and positive development that will significantly increase our distribution footprint and offer a substantially wider selection of quality life insurance products to BPI’s customers, which are keys to success under the growing popularity of bancassurance in the region.”

BPI President and CEO Aurelio Montinola III said that this joint venture is fully in-line with BPI’s vision to offer a full range of financial products and services to its customers. He said, “We always look for quality partners and we are excited about the prospects of this partnership with Philamlife. We believe that there are significant cross selling opportunities on both sides. We feel that in the same way that Philamlife will have access to our customer base for life insurance products, BPI will have reciprocal access to Philamlife’s customers for banking products. ”

Philamlife is currently in the process of becoming part of the AIA Group, subject to regulatory approvals. The AIA Group is a leading pan-Asian life insurance organization with a unique heritage of serving the world’s most dynamic region for 90 years, with over US$60 billion in assets and a large base of over 20 million customers.