Na­tal­ie?Brig­gs

In one of his first acts as the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the Caribbean Des­ig­nate, Bill Shultz launched Pan Amer­i­can Life In­sur­ance Group's lat­est in­sur­ance prod­uct of­fer­ing to the mar­ket. Called "Life Ac­cess", Shultz said there is noth­ing like the prod­uct cur­rent­ly in T&T.

Shultz, along with Bruce Park­er, se­nior vice pres­i­dent of Glob­al Life In­sur­ance, and Robert Di­Cian­ni, se­nior vice pres­i­dent of In­ter­na­tion­al Busi­ness, were on hand to talk to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian about Life Ac­cess and Pan Amer­i­can's pres­ence in and plans for the lo­cal mar­ket.Park­er ex­plained that "Life Ac­cess" was the first US-dol­lar de­nom­i­nat­ed uni­ver­sal life pol­i­cy. Uni­ver­sal life, he told Sun­day BG, was a true life in­sur­ance pol­i­cy with a built-in lev­el of flex­i­bil­i­ty.

"Un­like a tra­di­tion­al whole life pol­i­cy which many peo­ple are fa­mil­iar with, with a uni­ver­sal life pol­i­cy you can ad­just the face amounts. So if you start out with US$100,000 of face amount and your fam­i­ly grows, you can in­crease that prod­uct from US$100,000 to US$200,000. In­stead of buy­ing a whole oth­er pol­i­cy, you now have one pol­i­cy that can be ad­just­ed up."

The pre­mi­ums–payable in US dol­lars–can al­so be ad­just­ed down­wards, if the pol­i­cy­hold­er's cir­cum­stances change. The oth­er ben­e­fits of the prod­uct in­clude the abil­i­ty to ac­cess cash val­ue with­out penal­ty and a guar­an­teed in­ter­est rate of one per cent.The ex­ec­u­tives re­vealed that the pol­i­cy's launch in­ter­est rate is 3.75 per cent. Both cash val­ue and death ben­e­fits are paid in US dol­lars.

Pol­i­cy­hold­ers are al­so able to make high­er con­tri­bu­tions than their ac­tu­al pre­mi­um, al­low­ing "Life Ac­cess" to be used as "an al­ter­na­tive type of in­vest­ment," ac­cord­ing to Park­er.Shultz said the prod­uct was de­signed for an emerg­ing af­flu­ent busi­ness own­ers mar­ket, but could be adapt­ed to suit a wide va­ri­ety of cir­cum­stances.

"The young guy who is try­ing to save for his chil­dren's ed­u­ca­tion, peo­ple who are sav­ing for re­tire­ment, peo­ple who want a lit­tle bit of life in­sur­ance, but not as much cash build up. There is much that can be done with this pro­gramme."The Life Ac­cess prod­uct is on­ly the lat­est in a se­ries of in­no­va­tions the ex­ec­u­tives said have brought the com­pa­ny great suc­cess with­in the lo­cal mar­ket.

Park­er list­ed some of their more suc­cess­ful items since the com­pa­ny took over op­er­a­tions from MetLife in 2012 as be­ing their ma­jor med­ical pro­gramme–Pri­vate Client Health–which, he said, is aimed at the high­er end of the mar­ket. He added that Pan Amer­i­can's term life was al­so a very good sell­er. Their crit­i­cal ill­ness pro­gramme, while not as pop­u­lar as the oth­ers, was al­so do­ing well.

The ex­ec­u­tives told the Sun­day BG that the com­pa­ny planned to fo­cus on in­creas­ing its pen­e­tra­tion in­to the lo­cal mar­ket, where they saw op­por­tu­ni­ties for fur­ther growth.

Shultz said: "There is a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to grow the busi­ness here, to in­crease the pen­e­tra­tion in Trinidad. Be­cause if you do look at and com­pare it to some oth­er coun­tries, pen­e­tra­tion isn't as great. Some of the prod­ucts are out­dat­ed. That's the rea­son why we de­vel­op new prod­ucts and of­fer them to the com­mu­ni­ty. De­spite the fact there are sig­nif­i­cant amount of peo­ple with life in­sur­ance cov­er­age, I think there is still an op­por­tu­ni­ty to broad­en that and to ap­peal to a wider mar­ket."

The Caribbean area rep­re­sents 12 per cent of Pan Amer­i­can's group busi­ness. It is the sec­ond largest group­ing in terms of busi­ness for the group. The T&T mar­ket makes up six per cent of Pan Amer­i­can's to­tal busi­ness. Shultz said this was why in­creased pen­e­tra­tion was so vi­tal, since the re­gion rep­re­sent­ed a small­er per­cent­age of over­all busi­ness to pre­vi­ous own­ers.

Robert Di­Cian­ni, se­nior vice pres­i­dent of In­ter­na­tion­al Busi­ness, un­der­scored the im­por­tance of the de­vel­op­ment of new busi­ness in T&T and the wider Caribbean to the health of the Pan Amer­i­can."We can't be suc­cess­ful on a group lev­el, if we are not suc­cess­ful here."The ex­ec­u­tives said cur­rent­ly, their lo­cal in­sur­ance port­fo­lio is di­vid­ed in­to thirds: be­tween life, an­nu­ities and per­son­al ac­ci­dent cov­er­age and that they are sat­is­fied with this mix.

Shultz told the Sun­day BG that the com­pa­ny hoped to main­tain the di­vi­sion since it of­fered them an ad­van­tage in the es­pe­cial­ly cru­cial mid­dle mar­ket.The ex­ec­u­tives not­ed that Pan Amer­i­can was en­ter­ing a new phase, where there was a dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty that of mak­ing new ac­qui­si­tions.The ex­ec­u­tives' re­sponse was guard­ed, though, on the like­li­hood of ac­quir­ing Cli­co's tra­di­tion­al in­sur­ance pol­i­cy port­fo­lio, which is be­ing sold for val­ue by the Cen­tral Bank.

In an­swer to the Sun­day BG's ques­tion on the is­sue, the ex­ec­u­tives on­ly said: "We are look­ing in­to it".They were al­so sup­port­ive of ef­forts by gov­ern­ment to re­form in­sur­ance leg­is­la­tion. They ad­mit that they have seen the leg­is­la­tion and have made con­tri­bu­tions to its de­vel­op­ment. The Pan Amer­i­can ex­ec­u­tives told the Sun­day BG that the law, "was a work in progress" but could be ex­pect­ed to ben­e­fit both con­sumers and com­pa­nies when it was passed.