Fubon Life has been the leader among Taiwanese life insurers in terms of profitability for the past five years, and has led the industry in recruitment three years in a row. In 2013, Fubon achieved a first year premium (FYP) income of TWD 212.8bn (19 percent of market share), making it the number one life insurance company in the country. Earnings after tax last year reached a record high of TWD 19.13bn, marking an astonishing annual growth of 48 percent. Moody’s has confirmed Fubon Life’s credit rating status as A3, and upgraded its outlook to stable, which again is the best credit rating and outlook among all market players in Taiwan. The return on investment of Fubon Life over the past three years is part of the reason Fubon Life has achieved these ratings and outlooks from Moody’s (see Fig. 1).

This year marked a dramatic change in the life insurance market in Taiwan. The mainstream product has shifted to the field of long-term care due to the government’s amendment of the ‘Long-Term Care Service Act’. Online insurance policy subscription will also be allowed. As the leader in life insurance industry, Fubon Life will continue to promote its retirement planning programme, as well as strengthening its digital competitiveness, in order to contribute to the development of the life insurance market in Taiwan.

An ageing population
Taiwan’s population is an ageing one, meaning long-term care and health insurance policies will continue to be the mainstream products in the market. Long-term care – required most commonly as a result of chronic illness or disability – usually requires a significant amount of medical expenditure. Fubon has led the industry in launching long-term care insurance policies focusing on specific injuries and diseases that are the main catalysts for long-term care, to reduce the cost burden and fulfil the needs of policyholders. This year, Fubon Life introduced the concept of four major accounts for retirement planning: the ‘annuity and entertainment account’, ‘medical insurance account’, ‘long-term care account’ and ‘day care account’. These four accounts are intended to educate the general public to take advantage of various long-term care and health care insurance products and prepare for a future of lower birth rates and ageing society.

Digitisation, meanwhile, has become one of the most important trends in life insurance. Fubon Life draws on the latest digital technology to interact with its customers. It has developed the most comprehensive mobile insurance service in Taiwan and constructed the most extensive mobile/digital service network. Fubon Life has:

• Introduced the m-Application system. Fubon fully digitises the proposal form processing service. Its 15,000 agents can process proposal forms in 10 minutes with their tablet computers anytime, anywhere. Currently, one out of every two new policies of Fubon Life is processed in the digital format.
• Led the industry by introducing a photo claim service, which allows the claim application to be approved in as soon as 30 minutes.
• Developed an intelligent, image-based process management system to enhance operational efficiency, strengthen internal/external training and education on underwriting procedures, and build a strong and professional underwriting team. Through the intelligent system and the improvement of underwriting expertise, Fubon Life is able to enhance the speed and efficiency of proposal form processing. Currently, 80 percent of non-physical proposal forms can finish the underwriting procedures within one day.
• Introduced online internal training and marketing platforms. This year Fubon upgraded its internal training platform to the ‘Fubon New Vision Cloud Platform’ and allowed busy agents to access the training resources with their mobile devices anytime, anywhere. This not only improves the expertise of the agents, but also enhances service efficiency by offering clients a comprehensive service.

Last but not least, Fubon Life’s online policy subscription service has witnessed the beginning of the era of online insurance policy subscription in Taiwan.

Recruiting the best
During this period of economic recovery, another focus in Taiwan’s life insurance industry is the war of recruiting. Fubon Life has recruited more new agents over the course of the past three years than anyone else, and is expanding its recruitment activities from metropolitan areas to other cities and townships. The elite agents it recruited over the past few years have achieved impressive results and become the driving force of the organisational expansion.

The reason Fubon Life enjoys the leadership in new agent recruiting is due to its internal entrepreneurship system, which allows agents to focus not only on meeting sales targets, but also assume to a managerial role in leading his or her own sales organisation. The attractive career prospects and compensation plan have made Fubon Life Taiwan’s favourite employer among college graduates majoring in finance and insurance for four years running.

Fubon Life has introduced a ‘No Boundary’ recruiting programme, and plans to recruit 5,000 new agents from cities and townships around the island. In addition to expanding its service network, this programme is also intended to create job opportunities for young, talented people in their hometowns. Over the next three years, Fubon Life will continue to expand its reach and develop human resources. Its goal is to achieve a net growth of 10,000 agents to maintain its market leadership.

Fubon Life has been finding new ways to provide innovative and premium services to its clients, including forming a healthcare service team with a group of employees with medical backgrounds to provide health consultation services to the customers suffering from critical illnesses. The team provides customised health education material, a physician’s second opinion, and referrals to social welfare resources.

Fubon Life is the first in the country to offer the health education service to customers. It will send staff to visit its customers when they check into hospitals and offer them a ‘health tips folder’ that includes a variety of healthcare information for the policyholders. This consultation service has served a total of 36,421 policyholders and 18,790 copies of the health tips folder have been distributed to date.

Leading the industry
While Fubon Life’s competitors tend to outsource their emergency hotline to overseas, third-party entities, Fubon Life leads the industry by having its own staff to answer a toll-free overseas emergency hotline, offering policyholders medical advice and travel-related support without time difference and language barriers, and regardless of the amount of premium they have paid. Fubon Life also monitors major disasters and accidents home and aboard 24/7 to actively initiate the claim settlement or overseas emergency relief mechanism when needed. Its emergency relief task force helps the families of policyholders to handle relevant issues.

This year, Fubon Life launched the ‘Senior Policyholder Hotline’, which policyholders over 65 can call to make inquiries regarding their policies. It runs a 24/7 service available in different dialects. Policyholders do not have to listen to recordings and are served by real people. Fubon will even send agents to policyholders’ homes to provide services for senior policyholders if necessary.

Fubon also goes the extra mile to add a personal touch to its services, for example by designing greetings cards for children under 12 so that their parents can write messages to them. It is this kind of dedication to detail that saw Fubon Life receive the Best Service Award in the life insurance category by Commonwealth Magazine in Taiwan, and World Finance’s award for Best Insurance Company in Taiwan, 2014 – the first Taiwanese insurer to win the award on three separate occasions.