Bumpy ride ahead for insurers Prudential and Aviva

MACRO and firm-specific factors point to a bumpy ride in the new financial year for Prudential Singapore and Aviva Singapore - the two British-based insurers here which last week reported their 2015 full-year results. The saving grace are industry-specific factors that hold opportunities for them to sharpen their business growth.

Prudential Singapore recorded a 7 per cent rise in new business profit as it kept its focus on growing regular premium agency-sourced protection sales in fiscal year 2015.

It managed to do so even as the total annual premium equivalent (APE) - a measure of new business sales - dropped 13.4 per cent to £309 million (S$607.8 million).

But despite now boasting the biggest agency force, the traditional and highly-dependent distribution channel for some of the biggest insurers in the Republic, Prudential's new single and regula…