In spite of the COVID-19 pandemic spreading globally, the effects of which have drastically changed people’s lifestyles, Fubon Life Insurance actually grew against the headwind of 2020. Not only did its total assets exceed the NT$5trn (£128bn) mark, but the annual after-tax net profit also reached NT$61.04bn (£1.5bn), marking a substantial increase of 130 percent over the same period in 2019. Its overall premium income also exceeded NT$540bn (£13.9bn), making it a leading brand in the Taiwan insurance market. With the support from policyholders, and the trust and affirmation of investors, Fubon Life adheres to the strategy of flexible product portfolio and diversified distribution channels. It promotes insurance protection, continuous evolution, pursues excellence and practises the vision of enriching people’s lives with positive energy.
Benson Chen, President of Fubon Life, said that after experiencing the challenges surrounding an ageing society, the transformation of insurance products and the COVID-19 pandemic, insurance has become a substantial foundation for Taiwanese people’s health and medical protection and retirement life. This year marks the 60th anniversary of Fubon Financial Holdings and, as a subsidiary, Fubon Life aims to continue leveraging the value of insurance protection, provide services through the integration of resources with its ‘Five Ring Strategy,’ and fully implement the three pillar principles of ‘abiding by the law,’ ‘treating customers fairly’ and ‘implementing ESG.’
These principles are shaped within the culture of the company for continued growth of the company. Fubon Life demonstrates the far-reaching influence of the people’s brand, and at the same time, through a stable layout strategy, deepens the operation of overseas markets, and strides forward to the goal of becoming a first-class financial institution in Asia.
Promoting business development
Despite the severe impact on the business environment, Fubon Life maintained a stable level of tied agent manpower in 2020. There are nearly 500 agencies in Taiwan, serving more than 4.81 million policyholders nationwide, and this year Fubon Life expects to recruit 6,000 new tied agents. To encourage young people and those who are interested in joining the life insurance business, Fubon Life has the advantage of cross-selling resources, and has established a customer development process with financial holding characteristics, and built a digital event management platform, ‘FBFLi System,’ to enable tied agents to maintain a stable and interactive relationship with customers and keep track of the volume of activity over time.
In addition, Fubon Life also continues to promote the insurance policy review service, scientifically analyses the protection gap through the policy review system to help the policyholders improve the protection plan, and effectively increase production capacity and retention rate while improving the service capacity of the tied agents.
With the rise of the digital environment, Fubon Life has fully integrated online and offline insurance application service to strengthen the digital business momentum and break the boundary between virtual and physical channels. After implementing a long period of effective promotional strategy, Fubon Life has successfully gained the number one market share in 2020. This year, the company will focus on the promotion of protection-oriented insurance products and introduce simple and easy-to-understand products that can be applied for online, such as short-term life insurance, to meet the consumption characteristics of online users and help customers quickly construct basic protection.
Preparing for retirement
Facing the super-aged society in 2025, Fubon Life has launched the ‘Four Accounts of Retirement’ insurance protection project that covers medical care, long-term care, pension, and liability protection. It will also cooperate with the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) to launch the retirement preparation platform in July this year and continue to raise public awareness for retirement preparation. In addition to medical and health insurance, long-term care insurance and quasi-long-term care insurance, Fubon Life also actively develops retirement-related insurance products to meet the needs of local citizens.
On the other hand, public awareness of health protection has risen significantly due to the pandemic. The market for Fubon Life’s spillover policy is dominated by young people under the age of 35 in 2020, and there are more female policyholders than male policyholders. This shows that the younger generation is gradually accepting the concept of buying insurance for the promotion of good health.
Fubon Life also launched the market’s first diabetes spillover insurance policy, which is the industry’s best-selling diabetes insurance policy. It provides options for people with diabetes who were not easily covered by medical insurance in the past. This year there is also a focus on specific health issues to design and launch insurance products that meet the needs of the public. The policy design encourages policyholders to develop health management habits to achieve the substantial effect of disease prevention.
A people-oriented service
Fubon Financial Holdings’ core corporate values are ‘integrity, sincerity, professionalism and innovation.’ With ‘integrity’ as the top priority, Fubon Life believes that it is necessary to implement the principle of fair hospitality and internalise the concept into its corporate culture. Only when corporate culture takes shape can all employees share common beliefs and behaviours. These principles should be implemented from top to bottom to directly serve the company’s internal operations and external interaction with customers.
Caring for disadvantaged groups and striving to promote inclusive finance, Fubon Life gives full play to its functions and values, fully responding to government policies, and providing basic protection for the economically disadvantaged population through the design and promotion of micro-insurance products. The number of people benefitting from these products in 2020 has reached nearly 25,000. For senior citizens and people with limited mobility, Fubon Life has set up a toll-free service hotline at its 24/7 customer service centre, which is dedicated to serving people over 65 years of age. The process is never rushed and time is taken to explain the services in full and all policy-related services are also provided in dialects according to language preference.
Improving service accessibility
Fubon Life continues to cooperate with the Life Insurance Association to promote the ‘Insurance Blockchain Alliance Technology Application Sharing Platform.’ It also uses the policyholders’ usage scenarios as the basis for the application of insurance technology. Fubon Life chooses technology with a lower usage threshold to provide easy accessibility to policyholders of all ages. For example, policyholders can use LINE Pay, a social platform with a high penetration rate, to pay the premium or access related security services through mobile phone number MID authentication. They can also walk into convenience stores (such as FamilyMart and HiLife) to complete the verification and certification process of automatic premium payment deduction from the bank account.
Policyholders who live overseas or in remote areas can complete the claim application through the live broadcast feature of their mobile phones. The policyholders can receive the insurance benefit as soon as the same day of application. The use of Insurtech has also played a key role during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fubon Life has launched the ‘Health Checkup Alternative Programme’ with the video survival survey service. During the pandemic prevention period, policyholders do not need to go to a medical institution for a health check and can apply to conduct an assessment through video conferencing to reduce the need to visit a medical institution and in turn reduce the risk of infection.
ESG leads the way
An important policy of Fubon Life’s sustainable operation is ESG. In the promotion of green finance, through the four low-carbon strategies of green procurement, friendly workplaces, paperless services, and environmental protection, Fubon Life will work with policyholders to fully implement green actions from within the company. In addition, in terms of green investment, the company will make every effort to support and invest in the 5+2 industrial transformation plan and public construction projects. In 2020, Fubon Life invested more than NT$500bn (£12.8bn) in total to demonstrate corporate influence and focus on the sustainable development of Taiwan’s society.
The 5+2 industrial transformation plan includes industries such as smart machinery, Asian Silicon Valley (IOT), green energy, biomedical, national defence, new agriculture and the circular economy.
In terms of social care, Fubon Life continues to care for the elderly with dementia, and received responses from five counties and cities to join and support the service of giving free bracelets after confirming the diagnosis of dementia. With the cooperation of more than 100 hospitals in Taiwan, the chances of finding lost patients with dementia were significantly increased. This year, the ‘Smart Search Project’ will be promoted to make good use of technology to present humanised and localised care services.
In addition, Fubon Life also strongly supports Taiwan’s four major marathons and inter-departmental college basketball tournaments. The UBA tournament that Fubon Life has sponsored for five consecutive years has become the most popular college sports event in Taiwan. By supporting sports events, the firm intends to promote active lifestyles and strengthen public health awareness.
Fubon Life Insurance’s services have been recognised by professional institutions at home and abroad. It has won the title of ‘Taiwan’s Best Insurance Company’ by World Finance nine times and is awarded the number one insurance brand among the top 100 insurance brands worldwide by Brand Finance. Fubon Life has also won the ‘Insurance Quality Award’ in the categories of highest reputation, best insurance agent, best claims service, and the most recommended, for four consecutive years. Fubon Life has also been selected as the most aspiring employer for finance and insurance major graduates for 11 consecutive years, which demonstrates that Fubon Life’s efforts in sustainable operations and professional insurance services have captured the imagination of the public who the company proudly continue to serve.
