Philamlife gets 51 percent of Ayala Life, to sell in BPI branches

The country’s largest life insurer, The Philippine American Life and General Insurance Company (Philamlife) will acquire more than half of the insurance subsidiary of Ayala-led Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI). Through a bancassurance joint venture, Philamlife will have a 51-percent stake in Ayala Life Assurance Inc., which is the seventh largest life insurance company in the country with over P1.8 billion of gross premiums in 2008. In a statement, newly appointed Philamlife president and chief executive officer (CEO) Trevor Bull said the partnership is a result of its strategy to focus on the core life insurance and wealth management business. “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," he added. For the seven-month period, Ayala Life posted a 140-percent increase in gross premiums at P2.6 billion as a result of bancassurance sales. Philamlife is in the process of becoming part of the AIA Group, a leading pan-Asian life insurance organization with over $60 billion in assets and a large base of over 20 million customers. Upbeat on the partnership, BPI president and CEO Aurelio Montinola III said Philamlife would access the bank’s customer base for life insurance products while the bank can access the insurer’s customers for banking products. “We always look for quality partners. We are excited about the prospects of this partnership with Philamlife. We believe that there are significant cross selling opportunities on both sides," he added. The 158-year old BPI serves more than three million customers through its network of over 800 branches and 1,500 ATMs nationwide. BPI Capital and ING were the financial advisors to BPI while Deutsche Bank acted as sole financial advisor to Philamlife and AIA for this transaction. Philamlife has more than a million individual and corporate policyholders for various financial needs including income protection, retirement, education, investment, health, personal accident, group life and credit life. -Ruby Anne M. Rubio, GMANews.TV