View of Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong. Swiss Re cautioned that the slowdown of the global economy will be another factor that may mean sluggish profit growth for local insurers. Mike Clarke / AFP

The global inflationary trend plus the city's low interest rate environment, together with the macroeconomic uncertainty posed by the European and US debt crises, will crimp the profit performance of locally-listed insurance companies in the coming years, Swiss Re Director Clarence Wong said.

The Switzerland-based reinsurance company held a press conference on Thursday to explain the operating environment that global insurers will have to face.

Wong described the current global economic phenomenon of rising inflation with low interest rates as "the worst of both worlds" for insurance companies that will put severe constraints on their profitability performance.

"Inflation will reduce the attractiveness of long term life insurance products that lead to reduced sales as customers may find out that the purchasing power of the policy's cash payouts are being eroded," he said.

"On the other hand, though inflation is increasing globally, interest rates remain low. Therefore insurers are facing a difficult scenario wherein inflation is curbing product sales but low interest rates are curbing the return that can be earned by insurers," Wong said.

Many insurance companies such as Hong Kong-listed AIA, Prudential and Manulife have business operations all over the world, so their profit growth is heavily dependent on global inflation trends, interest rate movements and the financial climate of global asset markets.

How the European and the US debt crisis unfolds is also another important factor that will determine the profit growth of the insurers, Wong added.

"If the European and US debt crisis is to evolve into a global bond market crisis, insurance companies may suffer losses given that they have invested substantially in the global bond market to secure fixed rate returns," Wong said.

Financial analysts cautioned that the slowdown of the global economy will be another factor that may mean sluggish profit growth for local insurers starting in the second half of 2011.

"Given that AIA, Prudential and Manulife have trimmed their holdings of US and European sovereign debts, I think the US debt deadlock is unlikely to affect these insurers' profitability much," Core Pacific-Yamiachi Head of Research Castor Pang told China Daily.

"However, the slowdown of the global economy will have further detrimental effects on the insurers' future profitability as the economic slowdown will curtail sales of investment-linked insurance products that are essential to drive up insurers' profitability," Pang said.

To face the current unfavorable investment environment confronting the insurers, Swiss Re's Wong said that the insurers may adjust their asset strategies to pursue more risk-free assets to secure returns.

"However, the reallocation process may lead to concentration risks for insurers where they allocate their assets heavily to one type of asset, or put their assets predominately in one country," Wong noted.

Locally-listed global insurers start their earnings reporting season today with AIA set to announce its first-quarter results to June 30.

oswald@chinadailyhk.com

China Daily

(HK Edition 07/29/2011 page2)