AsianInvestor reveals the top 15 life insurance executives in Asia

Insurance companies are significant players in the global financial system. They safeguard the financial stability of households and firms by insuring their risks.

Life insurers, especially, are large investors in financial markets since they invest the insurance premiums received from policyholders.

Due to the long-term nature of many insurance products, insurers typically invest in long-term assets to match their long-term liabilities.

This acts as an important source of long-term funding for businesses and governments.

ASIA POTENTIAL

In the Asia Pacific, the life insurance sector has been growing rapidly in several markets, helped by a population of over four billion and rapidly growing economic clout.

While emerging markets have lower insurance density and penetration compared with developed markets, they are expected to see higher growth rates over the next few years, according to McKinsey.

Developed Asia Pacific markets are dominated by domestic players, except for Hong Kong and Singapore, where international players tend to set up regional headquarters and outperform local insurers on a smaller scale, McKinsey noted.

Meanwhile, international players lead in several emerging Asia Pacific markets.

Despite the immense potential, there are also challenges: wide-ranging regulatory changes, slowing growth in life premiums in recent years, increasing demands for actions around sustainability and climate change as well as updating business models grappling with digitalisation and disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence.

BUILDING THE LIST

As with our previous definitive lists – Top 20 Pension Fund Executives in Asia and Top 10 Sovereign Wealth Fund Executives in Asia – this list was seeded in extensive conversations with market experts to figure out exceptional individuals across several markets.

The editorial team engaged in several months of research to pick the most suitable candidates.

Along this journey, we spoke to executives from asset management companies, insurance specialists, independent consultants and custodians.

Our conversations with external experts threw up some strong names in several markets, which then led the editorial team to undertake its own research to understand local market dynamics, company performance among other criteria to finally decide on the final 15 names.

AsianInvestor’s Top 15 Life Insurance Executives in Asia list highlights the individuals who stand out in driving the industry forward via steady investment processes, robust operations, sustainability measures, as well as advocacy for best practices and transparency.

In creating this list, we were cognisant of the fact that life insurers face very different regulations across markets, which can significantly affect the scope of their operations and investments.

For instance, some life insurers are gradually raising their allocations in alternative assets, such as private equity, private credit, infrastructure and hedge funds.

Some of these allocations are regulation-prompted while others are market-performance driven.

In some markets, life insurers must manage the assets themselves (India) while in others, they can be outsourced to local managers (Singapore).

Our list showcases the best individuals taking into account the development pace of the markets in which they operate.

The list -- which is not ranked -- will be rolled out online.

The names will be revealed based on alphabetical order of markets in which the insurance executives are based.

The executives on the list come from insurance companies operating in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan.

This list is by no means exhaustive, and the goal is to recognise and showcase the individuals who are making distinctive efforts to help the industry – and its investments – evolve responsibly and sustainably.

Here is the list: 

John Lucey (Resolution Life Australasia); Damien Mu (AIA Australia)

Benjamin Deng (Ping An Insurance Group); William Chan (HSBC Life)

Mark Konyn (AIA Group); Ajit Banerjee (Shriram Life Insurance)

Johan Sidik (PT Asuransi Jiwa Sequis Life); Keisuke Kawasaki (Nippon Life Insurance)

Chung Mikyung (Shinhan Life Insurance); Liza Jansen (Prudential Plc)

Alex Kühnast (AIA New Zealand); Ivan Corcuera (Sun Life Philippines)

David Chua (Income Insurance); Allen Kuo (Singlife); Joseph Wang (Cathay Life Insurance)