By Andy Heong
U for Life Sdn Bhd launches Malaysia’s first online life insurance platform in Kuala Lumpur.
“U for Life is designed to make the process of signing up for a life insurance policy simple, instantaneous and affordable,” said Iskandar Ezzahuddin, general manager of U for Life Sdn Bhd.
According to Iskandar, within 10 minutes and after answering a simple set of questions, a person can purchase a basic life insurance policy and have the policy delivered via email immediately for as little as RM9.85 a month.
U for Life platform is also accessible from platforms including tablets and mobile phones.
When asked about the effect of the current economic challenges especially due to the devaluation of the ringgit on the life insurance market, U for Life sees it as an opportunity to expand into the market.
“People will start looking for lower price alternatives. In this situation, we believe that U for Life will be the lower price alternative,” said Iskandar.
U for Life is a 60:40 joint venture between Hannover Re the world’s third-largest reinsurer with an annual gross premium of RM69 billion and New Zealand insurance solutions developer Intelligent Life.
The insurer for U For Life is Tokio Marine Life Insurance Malaysia, who has 65 years of life insurance experience in Malaysia and approximately 5% market share in Malaysia.
From left: Toi See Jong, Iskandar Ezzahuddin, Claude Chevre
“We were able to identify a gap in the local market, thus the introduction of U for Life,” said Hannover Re executive board member and U for Life chairman Claude Chevre.
As U for Life is the first of its kind in Malaysia, Iskandar said that no premium target has been set for its first year of operations.
The current objective is to encourage Malaysians to be adequately insured and help increase the insurance penetration rate to 75% of the population to be insured by 2020 in line with Bank Negara Malaysia’s objective.
A recent study from the Life Insurance Association of Malaysia (LIAM) found that only 55.5% of Malaysians have insurance protection. Malaysians are generally under-insured compared to their peers in Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan.
U for Life has achieved a sum assured value of RM165 million since its soft launch in May 2015.
Tokio Marine Life chief executive officer Toi See Jong said he is “confident that our strategic collaboration with U for Life will offer real value to Malaysians as well as our business partners and of course, our agents”.
Toi added that the launch of U for Life will not reduce the role of its agents. Instead the platform will complement Tokio Marine Life agents by providing a platform for basic life insurance coverage, enabling their agents to focus on more complicated life insurance products.
You must be logged in to post a comment.