Prudential Profile
Prudential plc (Prudential), together with its subsidiaries, provides life and health insurance and asset management products in Asia and Africa.
In Asia, the company provides savings and protection products in many markets challenged by low insurance penetration and a pension funding gap. In Africa, the company is building businesses in some of the world’s most under-penetrated markets.
The company’s businesses are based in the Chinese Mainland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The company has operations in Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Nigeria, Cameroon, CÔte d’Ivoire and Togo.
The company continues to focus on developing its range of products and investing in its distribution channels, as well as enhancing and embedding its digital capabilities. In this way, the company expands its capacity to help protect its customers from threats to their health and wellbeing, as well as support them to achieve their savings goals. The company also remains focused on investing in its people and systems to ensure it has the resources to deliver on its long-term growth strategy and to enhance its operating model to keep pace with its opportunities.
The company has strong franchises and operational expertise in both the more developed markets and developing markets in Asia and Africa. The company continues to build on its success in the Chinese Mainland where it sees substantial opportunity to deepen its presence across a nationwide footprint. With the newly set up Macau branch of the Hong Kong business, the company is strengthening its operations to capture the opportunities in the Greater Bay Area and to fully prepare itself for the increase in opportunities following the reopening of the border between Hong Kong and the Chinese Mainland. The company also sees large growth opportunities in South-east Asia, particularly in Indonesia and Thailand, and also in India. The company focuses on selected markets in East and West Africa has provided it with exposure to a growing and fast-changing continent since it re-entered Africa in 2014.
Agency
Agency continues to be an integral part of Prudential’s brand and customer service platform. Across its markets, the company has launched and connected a series of agency growth programmes to build capabilities and expand capacity for its agency platform. Prudential’s Futuready Agency programmes aim to give its agency force a defensible competitive advantage by leveraging technology, behavioural science, and analytics to improve their skill sets, capabilities, and external positioning for long-term sustainable growth.
The company’s Futuready Agency programmes have four areas of emphasis:
Attracting Talent from Target Segments: PruVenture is Prudential’s signature recruitment programme to attract talent and build a purpose-driven agency force. This has been deployed in seven core agency markets and onboarded over 9,800 associates over three years with productivity four times higher than standard new recruits. The company’s profiling assessment, PruDNA, selects individuals with high propensity to succeed. Thirty thousand successful agents went through PruDNA assessment in 2022, prior to joining Prudential.
Leading and Coaching Leaders: PruVerge is Prudential’s signature learning programme for the next generation of leaders to help them attract, recruit, coach and build high-performing teams. This has enrolled over 6,000 Verge leaders over two years, where they learn the science of coaching and development utilising a data-driven decision model. The company saw an increase in agent recruitment per leader of 50 percent for the Verge leaders while overall recruitment was up 9 percent and agent productivity measured by cases per agent increased 6 percent in the year.
Building a premium career path for purpose-driven agents and offering robust professional development. The company had over 7,000 agents with production levels that qualified for the Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT) contributing to 42 percent of annual premium equivalent (APE) sales in the relevant markets in 2022.
Nurturing prospects by reimagining every aspect of prospecting, engaging, and advising to fit the digital business environment. Agents using PRULeads, the company’s activity and leads management engine, were 30 percent more productive with 32 percent of agency sales generated using PRULeads from 7.3 million leads channelled via PRULeads.
Bancassurance
The company operates the largest independent bancassurance franchise in Asia with access to over 190 bancassurance partners of which 10 are strategic partners. The company continues to invest and integrate its insurance solutions into the bank partners’ platforms and ecosystems to enable a seamless customer journey, supporting online to offline, virtual face-to-face and self-directed sales. The company also leverages its expertise in selling through bank partners to deepen its customer relationships with an emphasis on health and protection solutions.
New health and protection policies sold through the bancassurance channel increased 39 percent in the year.
Digital
Prudential’s digital platform, Pulse, continues to support and enable the company’s agents, customers and distribution partners across Asia and Africa in 19 of its majority owned markets of operation. The company is constantly evolving the Pulse proposition as market conditions and the distribution landscape changes. The agility and flexibility of the platform allows the company to provide products and services that meet the changing needs of multiple customer segments locally, while also providing up-to-date customer insights and leads to its distribution network. Pulse also supports a wide variety of modules to assist the company’s agency force, such as an integrated training and recruitment solution, ‘real-time’ management information tools and AI-powered analytics. From a technology standpoint, the Pulse platform utilises a one platform approach, allowing Prudential to consolidate and reduce IT investment over the long term, as well as accelerate application development and deployment across its many markets. The company remains committed to the strategic pillars which have driven its digital transformation and underpin its digital strategy. These are outlined as follows:
Accelerating its digitally-enabled model of distribution via PRUForce;
Improving servicing of existing and new customers via PRUServices;
Strengthening its direct digital insurance suite of products and services; and
Nurturing new business verticals and partnerships to drive future customer acquisition opportunities.
PRUForce, the company’s agency tool on the Pulse platform, has allowed its agents to be more efficient, reaching and managing multiple customers at a time, whilst still maintaining a personalised approach. The company continues to improve and refine this approach, with PRUForce central to the evolution of its agency network. PRUForce is live in six markets and offers the company’s agents the competitive advantage by allowing them to stay connected with customers, building trust and providing personalised advice.
Accelerating the digital enablement of the company’s distribution network remains critical for Prudential. The company provides a full set of digital capabilities enabling agents to interact with customers via a multi-channel approach. The use of data and analytics helps accelerate the company’s aspiration to support and increase sales productivity from those within its organisation, to those of its distribution partners. From a data security perspective, the company has developed a common bancassurance gateway which can manage all transactions securely between any bank and Prudential’s businesses, ensuring data security and privacy is always top of mind.
PRUServices is the company’s digital customer servicing platform, allowing customers and agents to access their policy claims, payments, and benefits. PRUServices is live in nine markets.
Furthermore, the ability to embed insurance products in the company’s ecosystem and in core offerings from its partners is critical. To offer these products dynamically and seamlessly to the broadest possible market is only achievable via a digital platform. The company has strengthened its direct product suite, including the launch of endowment products in several markets both via Pulse and through partners’ mobile apps. This has enabled the company to capture a larger pool of insurance customers from a wider range of socio-economic segments. The company’s life insurance joint venture in the Chinese Mainland and its associate in India maintain their own high-quality offerings via digital platforms with further details provided in the relevant sections that follow.
Finally, the company has expanded its collaboration with new partners. For example, in October 2022, the company entered a strategic partnership with Google Cloud to make healthcare and financial security more accessible across Asia and Africa. This strategic partnership supports the company’s broader digital strategy to leverage AI and advanced analytics to transform the customer and agent experience and lower barriers to accessing financial services.
Asset and Wealth Management
Eastspring Investments (Eastspring) is the pan-Asia asset management arm of Prudential with a presence in 11 Asian markets, as well as distribution offices in North America and Europe. Eastspring is well placed to address the saving and investment needs of customers across the region through a team of 300 investment professionals with local market expertise. Eastspring also benefits from reliable and stable fund inflows from the company’s insurance businesses which, together with its broad regional footprint, it can leverage to meet the long-term opportunity to grow mutual fund penetration from the market’s low base.
Eastspring is also playing an important role as an active asset manager and is engaging with investee companies and governments in supporting the company’s commitment to carbon reduction in its insurance company asset portfolio, allowing it to deliver profitable growth alongside a positive social impact.
The company sees opportunities to deepen its share of the wealth market by providing holistic wealth solutions to its high-net-worth and affluent customers. The company’s large and diverse customer base, well-positioned agency networks, strong intermediary relationships and leading brand name position it well to better serve this segment and deepen its relationship with its existing customers. Fund solutions occupy a central role in the product proposition, and the company is focused on offering customer choice and access to top fund managers and innovative portfolio options. The company’s intention is to distinguish itself in this market through its service to customers and additional value-added services, such as consultation with independent panels providing legal and estate planning advice.
Market
Chinese Mainland – CITIC Prudential Life (CPL)
Prudential’s life business in the Chinese Mainland, CPL, is a 50/50 joint venture with CITIC, a leading Chinese state-owned conglomerate. CPL is a powerful franchise with an extensive footprint across 23 branches. CPL is focused on the affluent and upper affluent segments of the market where there is more stability of income and employment. CPL’s diverse footprint supported its resilient performance with its Greater Bay Area cluster and Beijing performing well, offsetting some softness in Shanghai and surrounding cities which were most affected by Covid-19 surges during the first half of the year. CPL continues to outperform the market. As Covid-19-related controls are progressively removed, CPL will continue to use its multi-distribution platform to serve the insurance needs of customers in terms of health, protection, long-term savings and retirement planning and expects to see a more balanced mix of sales from agency and bancassurance going forward.
Delivering Customer-led Solutions
CPL seeks to address customers’ financial security and wellbeing at different life stages, with built-in related services enriching the overall customer propositions. Solutions and services are combined in an ecosystem that provides an integrated experience, which seeks to identify and meet the customers’ needs and so strengthens relationships with them for the long term.
During 2022 CPL continued to develop customised protection solutions. One specialised critical illness product that was specifically developed to meet the needs of customers in the Greater Bay Area of the Chinese Mainland contributed 21 percent of CPL’s relevant APE sales in that area. Beyond protection, CPL expanded its concierge service network to not only cover healthcare needs, including specialist consultation on treatment options, priority hospital access and mental health rehabilitation services, but also through development of its retirement and planning concierge service. This expansion includes extension of CPL’s retirement village network to cover 17 institutions in seven cities.
CPL is enhancing the digital experience to its customers and distributors, including through its mobile first Xin Yi Tong app. CPL’s ‘Virtual Lounge’ leverages technology to humanise the connection between the agent and the customer. The technology’s ease of use by customers has been recognised by digital media.
Multi-channel Distribution
CPL continues to focus on building a professional, high-quality agency force, with a strong understanding of its health, protection and retirement planning products. CPL has over 15,200 agents that serve customers across the country. While CPL’s agency channel continues to go through a period of rationalisation along with the overall industry, CPL’s agency force shows signs of stabilising in numbers, as well as improvements in quality, with APE sales per active agent rising 9 percent. CPL had over 1,000 agents with production levels that qualified for the Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT) in 2022. CPL is providing agents with advanced tools and techniques that help them engage with customers in order to provide solutions tailored to their needs and manage the conversion of leads to completed sales. Over time, as CPL’s agency force continues to mature and build experience, CPL expects this to result in further enhancement in productivity, providing additional support to the growth trajectory in CPL.
Meanwhile, CPL also continues to build out its bancassurance distribution network, adding 11 partners. China Merchant Bank has become a significant partner in the Greater Bay Area and beyond. CPL has a network of 59 bancassurance partners with access to over 6,600 branches across the Chinese Mainland. Importantly, these relationships are strengthened and enhanced by 3,200 local insurance specialists catering to customers of the banks. This has resulted in higher levels of new business from the bank channel and supported an improvement in product mix.
Consistent with the ongoing regulatory developments in terms of capital management and customer conduct in the industry, the company expects that refinements in the product features may, in the short-term, impact volumes but CPL continues to evolve its product set so that focus remains on meeting customer demands.
Hong Kong
Prudential has a strong and reputable brand in Hong Kong and serves over 1.3 million customers. The company is well prepared in all aspects, including distribution channels and customer servicing, platforms and systems, to serve Chinese Mainland customers.
The company obtained a license to open its Macau branch in January 2023, strengthening its operations to capture the opportunities in the Greater Bay Area. The company is building distribution capabilities having established a strong and experienced leadership team in Macau. The company expects that the Macau branch will take some time to establish itself before contributing meaningfully to the Hong Kong business.
Delivering Customer-led Solutions
The company’s continued pivot to domestic customers has resulted in an overall increase of market share to 7.4 percent, based on the latest statistics available from the regulator for 2022, despite fierce competition in the domestic market. The company’s customer base is stable with a retention rate of over 97 percent.
The business continues to refresh and upgrade its customer offerings with comprehensive protection and wealth accumulation propositions for affluent customers, for example through the launch of the company’s new multi-currency saving product with a special feature for wealth distribution across generations.
The company continues to enhance its health and protection product suite for its customers and potential customers, as well as being a leading player and offering a full range of VHIS products to serve its domestic customers. The company has fully embraced the government’s ‘Qualified Deferred Annuity Plan’ (QDAP) for retirement and continue to offer a competitive product, making it one of the leading players in the market.
The company’s investment proposition provides access to international equities and bonds. The company’s with-profits product offering pools the investments of policyholders and allocates returns based on long-term investment performance. This is a distinct, capital-efficient structure benefiting from significant scale, enabling Prudential to provide differentiated products while generating attractive margins.
Multi-channel Distribution
The company operates a digitally-enabled multi-distribution platform and provide customers with a choice on how they prefer to be served.
The company’s agency force accounted for more than 58 percent of its APE sales in the year. Despite a challenging operating backdrop in the first half of the year, agent activity rebounded in the second half, assisted by the company’s drive to increase activity through customer-centric solutions, enhancing digital capabilities and training and development programmes. The second half of 2022 saw positive momentum with an increase in APE sales for agency channel by 57 percent. The average agent case size was up 17 percent year-on-year on the back of a broadened savings product suite. Agent recruitment has also rebounded 45 percent in the second half of the year.
On the bancassurance side, the company has a long-standing strategic alliance with Standard Chartered Bank which has gone from strength to strength for more than 20 years.
Indonesia
Indonesia remains a critical market for Prudential. The company sees strong growth prospects specifically in the Syariah segment given low insurance penetration rates, a substantial protection gap and a sizeable Muslim population.
The company regained its leadership position in the Indonesian life market with 11 percent market share by weighted new business premium in 2022. The company is also the market leader in the agency segment with 28 percent of market share, and a market leader in the fast-growing Syariah segment, with 32 percent market share.
In 2022, the company became the first multi-national insurer to set up a dedicated Syariah life insurance entity in Indonesia as part of its strategy to meet the growing demands for Syariah solutions and support the growth of the Syariah community and economy. The company’s innovative product capabilities, coupled with a multi-channel distribution network, puts it in a strong position to grow its business and expand its customer reach.
Having completed a comprehensive refresh of the company’s product offering, it recently initiated a transformation programme for the operations of the Indonesian business, looking to refresh the existing agency model, rejuvenate the sales capability, improve productivity per agent, and drive higher performance through operational efficiency.
Delivering Customer-led Solutions
The company continues to focus on maintaining its market leadership by broadening its propositions, delivering sound advice and solutions, providing a superior customer experience, enhancing operational effectiveness, and exploring new avenues for customer acquisition.
In terms of product propositions, the company leveraged its dedicated Syariah life insurance entity in Indonesia by launching several new products in 2022. This included a first-in-market with yearly renewable term standalone Syariah critical illness product (PRUSolusi Kondisi Kritis Syariah) to meet consumer demand for simple, affordable cover. The company also launched an enhanced version of the first-in-market Syariah education savings product, first launched in 2021 (PRUCerah Plus), which supports customers with their children’s university education costs. These innovative products further strengthened the company’s competitive position of being the only insurer to offer Syariah traditional insurance solutions across multiple channels.
The business also launched new medical products (PRUSolusi Sehat Plus Pro and PRUSolusi Sehat Plus Pro Syariah) to address the health protection needs of a family, midlife, and younger segments. The company also continued to serve the insurance needs of the mass market segments by launching eight bite-sized digital protection offerings in Pulse and on the platforms of three digital partners, enabling it to acquire more than 91,000 new customers.
Multi-channel Distribution
Driving the quality and productivity of the company’s agency channel has remained one of its most important priorities. With 980 agents qualifying for the MDRT award in 2022, the company is the leader in the agency channel. The shift to full time agents led to a reduction in the overall agency force by (7) percent to 183,000.
In the bancassurance channel, the company’s long-standing strategic partnerships with SCB and UOB continued in 2022. These strategic partnerships have enabled it to provide solutions to a wide spectrum of customer segments, with SCB focusing on the premier face-to-face segment and UOB serving its customers through multiple distribution models. In addition to SCB and UOB, the company has partnerships with other banks on distribution and direct marketing. The company is seeking to enhance its bank partnerships particularly in the Syariah space.
Malaysia
In Malaysia, the company is the leading life insurer with 18.9 percent market share, and it has one of the largest agency forces in the industry. The company is the largest Takaful operator in the market with 22.3 percent market share.
Delivering Customer-led Solutions
The company’s number of customers was 3.0 million in 2022 with 1.5 million from the conventional business and 1.5 million from the Takaful business, stable year-on-year. The company continues to develop new and innovative propositions to address the evolving needs of its customers.
For example, the company strengthened its health and protection offering by enhancing its core medical investment-linked proposition, which caters for both new and existing customers. Its benefits offering is unique and supports customers’ needs by providing medical protection that automatically increases in value every year, unlimited room and board and ICU stay, and longer pre and post-hospitalisation care. It also rewards customers for staying healthy. The benefits are designed to reinforce the importance of early intervention and consistent annual preventive care. The company also provided a one-time offer to all its existing customers to opt-in for pandemic coverage if their existing policy excluded this benefit.
The company continued to expand its customer base and drive financial inclusion in the market. Through its partnership with BSN, the company has issued over 396,000 BSN Takaful Sakinah health and protection certificates. The company has also entered a digital partnership with EPF i-Lindung to offer under-insured Malaysians further protection coverage that can be funded from their Provident Fund accounts. The i-Lindung initiative is aimed at promoting the importance of financial protection amongst the lower income community without the burden of upfront cash outlay.
Multi-channel Distribution
Against a challenging operating backdrop, the company’s agency force continued to grow with the workforce increasing 8 percent over the period to over 24,300. The company continued to attract high-quality agents, with a retention ratio that is above market levels. In 2022, the company recruited over 7,400 new agents. The company upgraded its channel capabilities with digital tools and leads for effective customer prospecting. The company will continue to utilise digitalisation as a key enabler for customer and business excellence.
In the bancassurance segment, the company’s product innovation drove APE sales growth of 17 percent. Growth prospects remain strong as the company continues to build on its strength in the affluent segment and capture opportunities to penetrate the mass market segment across existing bank partners, including SCB, UOB and BSN.
Singapore
In Singapore, the company is one of the market leaders in protection, savings and investment-linked plans. The company has been serving the financial needs of Singapore residents for more than 90 years, delivering a suite of product offerings and professional advice through its network of more than 5,000 financial consultants and its bank partners.
In 2022, the company continued to drive its segment-led customer strategy by further penetrating the high-net-worth segment. In the affluent segment, the company intends to strengthen its leadership position with comprehensive health and retirement solutions. The company leverages its Pulse app and market-leading Shield offerings to expand its presence in the mass segment. For the younger generation, the company is reinvigorating its investment-linked propositions for both the affluent and mass market segments. Finally, the company further penetrates the SME segment through its Business@Pulse platform for the employee benefit business.
Delivering Customer-led Solutions
The company saw diversified growth across its wide product offerings in 2022 to meet the health and wealth needs of its customers in Singapore. APE sales to the high-net-worth segment grew 30 percent driven by new channels and services, as well as its effort to deliver superior customer experience. The company’s enterprise benefit business also delivered good growth with APE sales increasing by 17 percent, covering over 3,000 small-to-medium enterprises and over 200,000 employees.
To meet the specific retirement and investment needs of its customers, the company has launched PruVantage Wealth, an investment-linked product offering low fees, simplified charges and a wide range of professionally managed fund choices, including dividend paying funds and hassle-free model portfolio funds. The company is offering innovative plans that integrate both protection and wealth accumulation for younger customers with affordable premiums of 90 SGD per month for 200,000 SGD life and critical illness cover.
The company’s claims-based pricing model for the PruShield medical reimbursement product enables it to manage its health book sustainably and continue to offer best value for its customers without compromising their medical outcomes.
The company continues to improve its customer experience, leveraging digital and technology in its day-to-day operations. Three out of four policies went through instant underwriting engines, which improve productivity and turnaround time. An AI TalkBot with localised dialect was rolled out in 2022 to address customer queries instantly. In addition, the PRUaccess platform is interfaced with SGFindex which enables customers to have a single consolidated view of financial investments within Singapore so that the company’s customers can better plan their financial future. The quality of the company’s customer service is reflected in the form of a high customer retention ratio of 96 percent.
Multi-channel Distribution
The quality and productivity of the company’s agency force continues to improve significantly. The company is the first and only agency force in Singapore, where all agents are subject to the Institute of Banking and Finance (IBF) level 1 qualification. Regular premium APE sales in the company’s agency channel remained strong, and productivity, as measured by APE sales per active agent, rose 2 percent, despite the industry headwinds.
In the bancassurance space, with two strategic partners, UOB and SCB, the company is gaining access to more than 1.6 million active mobile banking customers and 130,000 small and medium enterprises and commercial banking customers. The company continues to work with the banks in serving their customers and focusing on distinct segments, such as the affluent and high-net-worth. The company has also offered digital wealth solutions on UOB mobile and SCB internet banking platforms. This enabled the company to connect directly with customers online or get a lead for customers who prefer face-to-face engagements.
Growth Markets and Other
The company’s growth markets and other segment incorporates its businesses in India, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and its businesses in Africa. The company sees the opportunity for rapid growth through the rollout of its efficient and scalable business model, and multi-channel distribution networks, including its digital Pulse platform.
India represents a very large opportunity for the company’s further growth, having a population of 1.4 billion, low insurance penetration and expectation of fast rising GDP per capita. The company is a Promoter under Indian Listing rules of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company, being one of the founding shareholders. The company has one board seat and owns 22 percent of its voting rights. ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company is amongst the top-three private life insurance companies in India and is listed on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) in India. It intends to grow its business by deepening penetration of under-served customer segments, enhancing its distribution footprint and tailoring solutions to the different customer needs across savings, protection, and retirement, including developing new propositions for the mass market.
The company’s strategy in Thailand is to focus on bancassurance and supported by alternative distributions, including digital, agency, direct marketing and brokerage, together with retail asset management offering. The company has completed the integration of its bancassurance capabilities with the expanded TMB Thanachart Bank (TTB), including the training of their staff in its products and propositions. The company continues to focus on delivering the benefits from its bank partnerships with both TTB and UOB. As a result, the company delivered higher-than-industry-average APE sales growth, both in the bancassurance channel and for the industry as a whole in 2022. The company has double-digit APE sales growth for three consecutive years from 2020 to 2022, and has an overall market share of 7 percent, being sixth in the market. The company is also offering relevant digital propositions served via the digital apps of its bank partners to bring new health and protection solutions to the underserved mass segment. In addition, the company has been working closely with its bank partners to unlock SME opportunities through its Business@Pulse platform for the employee benefit business. Finally, as part of the company’s integrated model for customers, it has been working in collaboration with its Thai retail fund management business to design propositions in the health, wealth, and retirement space, particularly for the high-net-worth and affluent segment.
The company is expanding its geographical footprint in the urban areas through digitally-enabled agency and bancassurance channels. The company is second in the market with 15 percent market share, up 2 percentage points from 2021.
The Philippines provides the company with an opportunity to serve customers, given the large protection gap and low level of insurance penetration across the country. The company is the market leader with 17 percent market share, based on the latest available market data to 30 September 2022, by weighted new business premium. The company’s core strengths in the affluent and mass market segments together with its digital capability helped drive a 17 percent growth in its customer base to 0.9 million customers.
The company is in top-five positions in five of its eight countries in Africa, including the number one position in Uganda and Zambia. The company’s business provided health, wealth and protection solutions to 990,000 customers across eight countries. Prudential was a sponsor of the 2022 Africa Cup of Nations, the largest football tournament in Africa. The matches were viewed by over one billion individuals, improving Prudential’s brand awareness throughout the continent.
Delivering Customer-led Solutions
In Thailand, the company continued to refresh its product suite to address the evolving needs of the Thai population’s health and wealth aspirations. From a low base, the company tripled its health reimbursement sales and its whole-of-life sales through extensive training for the bank staff, as well as widening health and protection products to both individual and its customers. The company also promoted protection through plans like Easy Care Plus, which offers simplified underwriting to its customers. In addition, the company relaunched its flagship 888 savings product, which is a long-term saving product that also offers protection, and other Legacy Builder products and introduced innovative Index Link Participating solutions. The company’s product initiatives have resulted in 17 percent growth in total bancassurance APE sales, including 19 percent growth in protection sales through TTB. The company’s focus on customer needs was also reflected in its market-leading net promoter score position in the market and its 11 percent increase in the number of new customers acquired, bringing total customer numbers to 1.7 million.
In Vietnam, the company continued to provide customer segment-led propositions by offering affordable protection solutions to the mass market segment alongside providing savings, education and health and protection plans to the middle-income segment, and serving the investment needs of affluent customers. To address the market’s need for affordable protection solutions, the company has launched System and Organ Function Insurance (SOFI), which provides simple to understand health coverage based on the severity of symptoms and organ function of customers. The company also has launched PRU-Easy365 offering comprehensive protection benefits against accidental risk and three common critical illnesses for customers. More than 2,100 and 31,100 SOFI and PRU-Easy365 policies respectively have been sold since launch, increasing the company’s penetration into the younger segment of the population.
In the Philippines, the company continues to drive product innovation and financial inclusion with the launch of PRUHealth FamLove. This is a first-of-its-kind critical illness protection plan for different types of Filipino families and can cover up to four family members in one policy. The product’s innovative design provides medical cover based on severity of illness, rather than specific diseases.
In Taiwan, the company provides solutions for long-term savings and protection to its target market segments. The company is focusing on addressing the diverse needs of the Sandwich Generation with unique end-to-end propositions. Through the company’s H.E.A.R. campaign, it is innovating and expanding its solution offerings for health and protection products. The company recognized the growing demand for eye-related treatments as people spend more time using electronic devices, particularly as working from home became more prevalent during the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2022, the company launched the first-in-the-market eye care insurance to strengthen the coverage for a broad range of eye-related treatments from simple eye care to complicated eye surgery. The product was well received and the continued emphasis on health and protection led to a 94 percent increase in sales of such products in 2022.
In Africa, the company continues to pursue customer-led insurance initiatives, with the launch of 12 new products across the region in 2022. The company has also introduced end-to-end digital products in three countries.
Multi-channel Distribution
In the agency channel, the company recruited over 34,700 new agents during the year, bringing the total number of agents to over 204,000. Outside agency, the company has over 850 partnerships, including 34 banks. The company has built a state-of-the-art platform enabling ease of integration with ecosystems and partners’ systems. Additionally, the company supports its partners to build customer onboarding journeys on their platform powered by micro services.
In Thailand, the relaxation of Covid-19-related restrictions during the second quarter of the year resulted in the reopening of many of the bank outlets of the company’s main distribution partners, TTB and United Overseas Bank (UOB). TTB is one of the largest banks in Thailand with around 600 branches, and UOB has around 150 branches. The company continues to engage actively with its partners at TTB to improve productivity and customer experience, as well as to extend its reach to the wealth and enterprise benefit segments. The acquisition of Citibank’s Thailand operations by UOB provides an opportunity to further grow the company’s bancassurance presence and expand its customer base. The company’s digital channel also achieved a robust result where it attained second position in the digital market share.
In Vietnam, the company continued to focus on quality recruitment and training in the agency channel and supporting its agents with access to comprehensive product propositions and digital tools, such as PRUForce and PRULeads. As a result, the company has grown its number of MDRT qualifiers by 60 percent in 2022 to almost 2,000. The bancassurance channel continued to record strong growth of 26 percent, underpinned by its partnerships with seven banks with strong operations in urban areas, which combined have over 600 branches in Vietnam.
In the Philippines, the company’s agency channel continued its strong growth with a 89 percent growth in recruits. In addition to agency, the company continued to grow its customer base and promote financial inclusion by offering bite-sized products on Pulse and by partnering with banks and other digital outlets. The company’s partners include CIMB, a digital bank with more than 6.5 million customers, GCash, the top mobile wallet provider in the Philippines, and Shopee, the leading online shopping platform.
In Taiwan, the company’s 35 percent APE sales growth in 2022 was supported by strong bancassurance performance. Through strategic and non-strategic bancassurance partners and brokers, the company continues to broaden and diversify its distribution network. The company reaches customers through partnerships with more than 20 banks and top brokers in Taiwan, and it continues to digitalize its processes to provide seamless services to customers and distributors.
In Africa, Prudential has a 16,000-strong agency force and is the first African company to achieve the over 200 MDRT members milestone in 2022. In addition, Prudential Africa has access to over 1,000 bank branches, digital, telecommunication and intermediary partnerships. The company’s ongoing investment in digital innovation and robust systems to digitize processes will allow it to grow at scale and provide seamless experience to better service its customer needs.
Eastspring
Eastspring is the asset management arm of the company. Eastspring’s ambition is to be a leading provider of investment solutions to protect and grow clients’ wealth. Its purpose ‘Experts in Asia. Invested in Your Future’ guides the business and reflects its commitment to help its stakeholders build a better and more sustainable future.
Intellectual Property
Prudential conducts business under the ‘Prudential’ and ‘Eastspring Investments’ brand names and logos. It is also the registered owner of over 100 domain names, including ‘www.prudentialplc.com’ and ‘www.eastspringinvestments.com’.
Strategy
The key elements of the company’s strategy include growing its savings and protection business by protecting its customers’ health and wellbeing; focusing on the growth opportunities in the Chinese Mainland, India, and Southeast Asia; positioning eastspring to be a leading responsible investor in Asia; supporting sustainable growth through its inclusive approach to climate transition; accelerating its digitally enabled model of distribution; improving customer servicing; strengthening its direct digital insurance product suite; and entering strategic digital partnerships.
Customers
The company’s total life customer base increased to 18.3 million.
Supervision and Regulation
The Hong Kong Insurance Authority (Hong Kong IA) is the company-wide supervisor for Prudential.
Prudential’s non-U.S. affiliates had contractual relationships with nine persons sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Department of Treasury in relation to Iran, terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and trading with North Korea.
Asia Supervision and Regulation
Hong Kong
Prudential operates two subsidiaries in Hong Kong for life (Prudential Hong Kong Limited (PHKL)) and general (Prudential General Insurance Hong Kong Limited (PGHK)) insurance businesses, with both entities fully under the regulatory regime of the Hong Kong Insurance Authority (Hong Kong IA).
Singapore
Prudential Assurance Company Singapore (Pte.) Limited is registered by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (the MAS) to design and sell both life and accident and health insurance products pursuant to the Insurance Act and Financial Advisers Act.
Indonesia
Prudential Assurance Malaysia Berhad (PAMB) is a member of the Life Insurance Association of Malaysia (LIAM), a self-regulatory body. Resolutions and circulars issued by the LIAM are binding on the member insurance companies.
Vietnam
Prudential Vietnam Assurance Private Limited is licensed and regulated by the Ministry of Finance (MoF) as a life insurance company.
Regulation of Investment and Fund Management Businesses and Other Regulated Operations
Singapore
Eastspring Singapore is regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (the MAS). The company holds a Capital Markets Services Licence under the Securities and Futures Act, Cap 286 to conduct the following regulated activities, such as fund management and dealing in securities.
In addition, Eastspring Singapore holds other registrations outside of Singapore, including the Registered Investment Adviser with the U.S. SEC and the Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors with the CSRC in China. As such, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and CSRC regulations relevant to these registrations apply to Eastspring Singapore. Furthermore, Eastspring Singapore is the appointed fund manager and global distributor of the Eastspring Investments Luxembourg SICAV funds. Accordingly, the UCITS regulations issued by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF) and certain requirements by the European Union (EU) and European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) are relevant to Eastspring Singapore.
Malaysia
Eastspring Investments Berhad (EIMY) and Eastspring Al-Wara’ Investments Berhad are primarily regulated by the Securities Commission Malaysia.
Thailand
TMBAM Eastspring and TFund Eastspring, Prudential’s majority owned subsidiaries are both investment management companies regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand.
Chinese Mainland
Eastspring Overseas Investment Fund Management (Shanghai) Company Limited and Eastspring Investment Fund Management (Shanghai) Company Limited, both Eastspring subsidiaries, as well as CITIC-Prudential Fund Management, Prudential’s asset management joint venture with CITIC Trust, and its subsidiary, CITIC CP Asset Management Company, are governed by the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC).
History
Prudential plc was founded in 1848. The company was incorporated in 1978 and registered in England and Wales.
