Bright spots ahead for insurer Great Eastern

COMPOSITE insurer Great Eastern, a subsidiary of OCBC Bank, recently posted an 11 per cent fall in fourth-quarter net profit to S$195.2 million and a 25 per cent drop in full-year earnings to S$589.3 million. The 2016 bottomline numbers are uninspiring if one looks at them from a short-term perspective.

But total weighted new sales (TWNS) and new business embedded value (NBEV) point to a brighter picture for the longer term.

The 2016 numbers show that TWNS for Q4 2016 and FY2016 rose 13 per cent and 11 per cent to S$343.5 million and S$1.07 billion respectively, no mean feat in a relatively mature insurance industry in the region. These growth rates are robust, as Great Eastern put it.