The insurance industry is expected to bounce back in the second half after two straight quarters of negative performance this year, a top executive said over the weekend.
Philippine-American Life Insurance Corp. chief executive Ariel Cantos said the industry would perform “better” in the second semester, as premium income was normally peaking in the latter part of the year.
“The performance of the second quarter is better than the first quarter but based on experience, the entire industry in the second half of the year is always better than the first half. Our assessment is that if we had a negative performance in the first half, that should be improving in the second half. The industry was usually kicking up in the second half,” Cantos told reporters in an interview.
Cantos said while the non-life industry performed better in the first six months, the life industry would kick up in the remaining months of the year amid business confidence in the new administration.
“Even on the life side, the second half is stronger than the first half and if we are going to base on what the second quarter growth rate is [and], the one that appears in recent surveys that businessmen and COOs are confident about the future, the second half will be better than the first half,” Cantos said.
The insurance industry’s premium income fell 9.1 percent in the first half to P105.52 billion from P116.11 billion posted in the same period in 2015.
Insurance commissioner Emmanuel Dooc said the life sector’s premium income went down 16.8 percent from P98.83 billion to P82.20 billion, while the non-life insurance sector rose 13.9 percent from P17.28 billion to P19.69 billion.
“Based on the submission of the industry players, the decline in the total premium was mainly due to the lower sales performance by the life insurance sector. In particular, there was a significant drop in the premium production in variable life insurance products of the major players in the life insurance sector,” Dooc said.