FTLife, which has been under Chow Tai Fook's subsidiary for five years, is finally going to "line up" with shareholders in its name and will change its name and surname.
On April 29, FTLife announced that it will change its name to Chow Tai Fook Life Insurance Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Chow Tai Fook Life") in the third quarter of this year, and will launch a new brand, closely following the abundant resources of Chow Tai Fook Group's diversified business system, leveraging its financial strength and global investment layout, coupled with its unique brand positioning, and is committed to providing customers and their families with personalized and ingenious planning, lifelong protection and quality experience in the life journey of "birth, aging, illness and inheritance", and continue to create value beyond insurance.
It should be noted that this is the fourth name change of FTLife. From New Zealand Insurance to Pengli Insurance, to Pacific Century Insurance, to FTLife Insurance now, and Chow Tai Fook Life Insurance in the future, every name change is accompanied by a change of shareholders.
Hand in hand for five years
Closer to Chow Tai Fook
FTLife said that Chow Tai Fook has strong strength and stable goodwill, which is a guarantee of confidence. The name change signifies the close relationship between the company and the Chow Tai Fook brand, further reinforcing customers' confidence in FTLife and FTLife's reliable brand image.
In fact, when it comes to the marriage between Chow Tai Fook and FTLife, it dates back to 2018. According to the data, in the second half of 2018, there were rumors in the market that Jiuding Group was going to sell its Fortis Insurance, in which Jiuding Group also responded that it did intend to sell the equity of its wholly-owned subsidiary FTLife Insurance, and was in contact with a number of potential strategic investors. Although it received an affirmative answer from the seller at the time, it is unclear who FTLife will end up with due to the number of potential takers.
It wasn't until December 2018 that the details of the sale were finally revealed. According to the announcement issued by Jiuding Group at that time, its wholly-owned subsidiary, Fortis Asia Holdings Co., Ltd., sold 100% of the equity of its wholly-owned subsidiary FTLife Insurance to Earning Star Limited, and the transaction price was set at HK$21.5 billion (excluding the interest during the lock-up period), corresponding to a cost of about HK$15.5 billion, an investment profit of about HK$6 billion, and a total return on investment of about 38.7%.
Earning Star Limited is indirectly wholly owned by NWS, while NWS is the controlling shareholder of NWD, which is actually controlled by Chow Tai Fook. After this equity transfer, FTLife is under Chow Tai Fook and becomes a member of the "Cheng family" business map. Now, FTLife has been part of Chow Tai Fook for more than five years.
Regarding the early announcement of the name change, FTLife said that in fact, the company started the rebranding process as early as last year, from brand concept, market positioning, brand color to name change, and gradually launched different initiatives and large-scale brand publicity activities to reflect the company's long-term strategic goals and overall brand image.
"With the new corporate identity, we hope to actively expand more strategic partnerships within and outside the Group, create more development opportunities for life planners, business partners and the Group, and further unleash the huge potential to help drive sustainable business growth and serve different customers with better products. ”
At the same time, FTLife said that the rebranding and launch of the new brand will not affect the identity and ability to continue to perform the duties related to the customer's policy in accordance with the existing policy terms of the customer's policy. The protection, benefits, returns, and day-to-day management and operation of existing policies (including but not limited to claims, renewals and fees) will not be affected by the rebranding and launch of a new brand as a result of this deployment. The company's business operations remain consistent and will continue to provide customers and their families with ingenious planning, lifetime protection and quality experience.
It has been established for nearly 40 years
Changed its name four times
As a long-established insurance company, FTLife has made several acquisitions and rebranded since its establishment.
According to the data, FTLife was established in June 1985 and was originally known as New Zealand Insurance. In 1992, Hong Kong entrepreneur Yuan Tianfan acquired New Zealand Insurance and renamed it Pengli Insurance. It is reported that Pengli Insurance once caused a poaching war in Hong Kong, but due to disagreements between partners, it was sold to Li Zekai in 1995, acquired by Yingke Group, and renamed Yingke Insurance, and listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 1999.
In 2007, Li Zekai sold 50.5% of the equity of Yingke Insurance to the Belgian Fortis Group, cashing out more than 3 billion yuan. At the same time, Fortis Group proposed a general acquisition to the remaining minority shareholders at the same price, and the entire acquisition involved a capital of about HK$6.986 billion. However, due to the acquisition of more than 90% of the equity of Pacific Century Insurance by Fortis Group, the listing status of Pacific Century Insurance was cancelled for this reason. In August 2007, Pacific Century Insurance changed its name to FTLife Insurance (Asia) Limited.
In 2015, the insurer made another shareholder change. In August of that year, Jiuding Group acquired Ageas Asia Holdings Limited (FTLife Asia Holdings Limited) for about HK$10.688 billion in cash, and FTLife Asia Holdings Limited is mainly a holding company and has no business, and FTLife Insurance, which is wholly-owned and indirectly controlled, is the "real thing". To this end, the shareholder behind FTLife Insurance has changed from FTLife Group to Jiuding Group.
After joining Jiuding Group, FTLife has developed more rapidly, and behind it is inseparable from FTLife's more active development. According to some information, after Jiuding Group became the owner, FTLife became more active in recruiting sales personnel and management incentives, such as "poaching" by paying high wages and transfer fees, and providing high basic salaries for new agents.
As a result, FTLife has developed rapidly. According to the data, in 2017, FTLife's revenue reached HK $8.437 billion, with a net profit of HK $996 million, and in the first half of 2018, FTLife's revenue was 3.224 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 23%, and a net profit of 512 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 47%, and FTLife's profit once accounted for 85% of Jiuding Group's total profit.
However, since the second half of 2018, FTLife has been brewing a new shareholder change, which is the entry of Chow Tai Fook later. Now, FTLife has once again announced a name change, which will also be its fourth name change.
The momentum is strong
Take advantage of the diversified layout
At present, FTLife's development is still strong, especially after the full reopening of customs between Hong Kong and the mainland, the enthusiasm of mainland residents to apply for insurance in Hong Kong has increased significantly, which is a great opportunity for the development of Hong Kong's insurance industry.
From the perspective of FTLife, the total premium income of HKFRS in the 2022-2023 fiscal year will be HK$20.799 billion, of which life insurance business will be HK$17.992 billion, critical illness insurance will be HK$1.681 billion, etc. As of 31 December 2023, FTLife's annualized premium income (APE) grew by 176% year-on-year, much higher than the industry's overall growth rate of 99%, and premium income grew by 233% year-on-year, far outpacing the overall growth of its peers by 34%.
In terms of sales channels, FTLife also adopted a multi-channel strategy, among which the brokerage channel business ranked second in the market with a market share of 12.4%, the APE performance of the agency channel increased by 15% year-on-year in 2023, and ranked 8th in the market in terms of premium income performance.
In terms of investment income, as at 31 December 2023, FTLife's overall investment income (which includes dividend and interest income only) further improved to 3.8%, up 0.2 percentage points year-on-year. It can be seen that a number of indicators show that FTLife has performed very well in the past year.
Due to the strong profit growth, FTLife's attributable operating profit further increased to 19.35% from 12.87% in the same period last year, playing an increasing role and contribution to the Group's ecosystem.
FTLife said that the company will make greater efforts to leverage the abundant resources of Chow Tai Fook Enterprises and the company's unique brand positioning, and look forward to creating greater synergies to serve customers in both places and even Asia with better products, and to become a leading insurance company in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.