Manulife S'pore rides high on 2016 breakthrough year

WHAT a difference 2016 has made for Canadian insurer Manulife Singapore, whose fortunes were turned around from struggling for new business market share in a highly competitive sector to now being one of the front runners.

As chief executive Naveed Irshad puts it, the Manulife Singapore growth story in the past three years is a simple and straightforward one.

Under the Canadian's watch, the company has grown 10-fold and Singapore is now the group's third largest market in Asia, after Hong Kong and Japan. In 2016, Asia contributed a third of the group's core earnings and 81 per cent of new business value (NBV). Annualised premium equivalent (APE) - a measure of sales - in Singapore grew from US$71 million in 2014 to US$374 million in 2016 while NBV soared from zero to US$85 million in the same period. On a constant currency basis, core earnings rose from US$19 million to US$64 million.