Allianz eyes 10% emerging market growth in 2008

Frankfurt: Europe's biggest insurer Allianz is aiming for top-line insurance growth of at least 10 per cent in emerging markets this year, Allianz board member Werner Zedelius told Reuters in an interview.

"Our goal is to add at least 10 per cent per year in our growth markets and we've managed it up to now. We're doing everything we can to make it again this year," said Zedelius, responsible for business in 26 markets in Europe and Asia.

Allianz set a target in 2006 to earn 15 billion euros ($23.40 billion) in premiums from emerging markets, mainly central and eastern Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, within three to five years.

At the end of 2007, premiums were 12.8 billion euros, a 24 per cent increase over the previous year, with Asia-Pacific contributing 8.8 billion euros and eastern Europe 4 billion.

"We will probably reach our goal sooner rather than later," he said.

Emerging markets developed positively last year and Allianz also added some acquisitions, such as Russian insurers Rosno and Progress-Garant, which also boosted premiums.

"We more than met all our targets for sales and earnings," Zedelius said.

Prices for potential takeover targets still varied across emerging markets, Zedelius said.

"We are mainly focused on internal growth but we also look selectively at acquisitions," he said. "There will certainly be some buying opportunities also in the future," he said.

Allianz's growth market businesses steered clear of investments in subprime-related assets but they have noted some uncertainty among retail investors in some markets in the wake of the crisis.

For example, new business suffered in the first quarter in India, but generally the company has seen no big declines.

Allianz is pushing for long-term growth in China, where it earned more than 300 million euros in premiums in 2007.

It plans to raise the number of agents there to 40,000 in 2009/2010 from 11,000 now and is also expanding geographically, though the regions where it is already present have a combined population of around 250 million people.

"We've just received a licence for the Beijing region, which I definitely wanted to have ahead of the Olympics to show: We are now in the capital."

Allianz has focused so far on life insurance in China, which contributed about 290 million euros in premiums last year, with sales helped by cooperation agreements with banks ICBC and Agricultural Bank of China.

Zedelius said he was concerned for the safety of Allianz staff in Sichuan following last week's devastating earthquake in the region, noting that one employee was still missing.

"We don't expect significant claims for Allianz, however. We're still small in property insurance and while we may have some cases on the life side, that's what we're there for."

In Japan, Allianz has already reached its target for 2008, just six weeks after starting life insurance sales, Zedelius said.

In India, Allianz has more than 10.7 million policies outstanding. "That's an incredible number for a company that didn't even exist in 2001," Zedelius said.

Premiums there totalled almost 1.8 billion euros last year, about 1.4 billion of which were in life insurance.

Zedelius said Allianz was in concrete talks about its expansion into asset management in India but declined to give details.

Source: Reuters