Steven Chia:
So social enterprise means you got to make money before you can give money away, right?
Prof Loh:
If you are not financially sustainable there’s nothing to talk about in governance, you cannot even help other people if you cannot help yourself.
Steven:
Was Income (Insurance) in a way, in not such a great shape, in the sense that they needed some of the support otherwise, eventually, if they stayed on their own, would they maybe even die out at some point in time?
Prof Loh:
No, let’s look at it in perspective before they became corporatised, and I have made some computation. Their rate of growth as a co-operative is actually much lower than the rate of growth of the finance and insurance industry. So we thought that corporatisation could turn the situation around, but in fact, the revenue from premiums did not go up. It actually went down.
Crispina:
Income (Insurance) is technically one of the big four, “too big to fail”. The narrative seems to be that this would have helped them make (more) money. But were they not competitive, or are there just more players in the field?
Eddy Cheong:
Firstly, the insurance thing has become very competitive over the years. Over the last 20 years, there are many new insurance players coming in: Aviva, FWD, China Taiping and so on. And when these players come in, the market share of individual insurance becomes smaller.