Singapore’s life insurance industry took a hammering in the
first quarter of 2009, reports the Life Insurance Association of
Singapore (LIAS). Sales totalled S$818 million ($553 million), a
plunge of 73 percent compared with the same period in 2008.
The fall came on the back of an 11.3 percent decline in
first-quarter GDP and revision of the government’s GDP forecast for
2009 as a whole from -6 percent to -9 percent.
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The slide in first quarter new sales followed a torrid fourth
quarter in 2008, in which new sales fell 62 percent compared with
the fourth quarter of 2007 to S$1.03 billion.
As in the fourth quarter of 2008, the first-quarter fall in 2009
was led by the industry’s mainstay, single premium products which
saw new sales slide 77 percent to S$644 million from S$2.76 billion
in the corresponding quarter of 2008.
Regular premium sales in the first quarter of 2009 were also
affected by economic woes, but to a lesser extent, falling 27
percent to $174 million.
Painting a bleak outlook, LIAS president Darren Thomson said:
“Faced with a depressed job market, continued financial market
volatility and uncertainty as to when a sustained global recovery
will take place, we believe consumers are likely to continue to
hold off any decisions to buy life insurance.”
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