Singapore’s life insurance industry
continued to recover in the first half of 2010.
The Singapore Life Insurance
Association (LIA) reported new business of S$2.608bn ($1.92bn), an
increase of 33.9% compared with the S$1.948bn reported same period
in 2009.
Go deeper with GlobalData
However, the recovery came off a
very low base resulting primarily from extremely depressed new
business of S$818m in the first quarter of 2009.
Singapore’s life market was one the
world’s most seriously impacted by the global financial crisis with
first quarter 2009 new business having been a mere third of that
achieved in the first quarter of 2008.
New business in the first half of
2010 was also notably down on the S$4.213bn reported by LIA in the
second half of 2009.
The life market’s new business also
remained well below peak levels reached in 2007 and 2008, a period
during which demand for investment-linked products boomed.
In 2007, for example,
investment-linked products achieved sales of S$3.84bn or 68% of
total sales while in the first half of 2010 they accounted sales of
S$782m or 30% of total sales.
