26th Asia Insurance Industry Awards 2022

Muang Thai Life Assurance (MTL) impressed the judges for its increased focus on innovation and community involvement in the midst of the COVID-19 disruptions.

MTL is one of the leading life insurance companies in Thailand and continuously invests in equipping its workforce with future-ready skills. The company has been empowering its younger team members to lead projects within the organisation, preparing them to take on leadership roles in the future.

To aid customers and employees in their insurance journey MTL has invested in modern technology and processes. Its LearnRu application is an all-in-one modern learning platform for all its employees and agents. Chompoo, which is an AI chatbot that promptly and accurately answers customers queries.

Through its company Fuchsia Venture Capital, MTL invested in a number of start-ups, which include Benix and AI GEN. Benix is a joint venture with Humanica, that offers a comprehensive employee benefit platform and services, including insurance and personalised welfare. AI GEN is a technology subsidiary company, established to develop AI and machine learning solutions to serve MTL and other companies across the ASEAN Economic Community and in CLMV countries.

The company’s ESG programme is aligned in line with principles of sustainable development. Some of the major initiatives undertaken by the company under its ESG banner include:

• Muang Thai-Thai Sea Conservation Project, which is a collaboration between its employees, universities, communities and the government
• Go Green and Post Rebox, which is an activity for employees for creating awareness and promoting environment conservation
• Muang Thai Mob Thun Nong Noi Projects, through which MTL supports the educational activities for youths and underprivileged children through scholarships
• Muang Thai Marathon, through which it supports sports and encourage people to care about their health. Over 10,000 people participate in the marathon every year
• COVID-19 donation support, through which the company donated money, pulse oximeters, ventilators, PPE kits and medical equipment to hospitals and foundations to promote health and sanitation in society. 

Bajaj Allianz GIC has been at the forefront of groundbreaking initiatives in the Indian insurance landscape offering enhanced solutions to address current and emerging risks.

Bajaj Allianz GIC serves over 120m customers across India and operates with a team of over 7,000 employees and over 80,000 advisers. The insurer has delivered strong financial results in FY2022 with INR137.8bn ($1.7bn) in GWP, underwriting profits of INR330m and a 6.2% market share.

The insurer’s CRM platform has been built to provide a 360-degree view and detailed description of its customers and records, and also maintains and upgrades the relationship duration of a customer with the company on various parameters.

Bajaj Allianz GIC’s core policy administration system Maximus is an industry first cloud transformation-based initiative in India, wherein the complete solution has been moved from on-premises to the cloud. The insurer’s tech-based innovative solution for fraud investigation encompasses an end-to-end series of initiatives on proactive identification of potential triggers.

One of the major achievements for the company in 2022, apart from launching a slew of new products, was the launch of a multilingual website in nine Indian languages.

On the CSR front, Bajaj Allianz GIC partnered with children’s charity Smile Train to help provide over 10,000 cleft reconstructive surgeries to underprivileged children. It also launched the Care4Hockey campaign with a goal to support the development of field hockey in India at the grass-root level and elevate the sports recognition in the country. For this it has associated with One Thousand Hockey Legs, a flagship project of an NGO, where the Indian field hockey women’s team is the face of this campaign.

Through its ESG activities, the company has built social relationships not only with its customers and business partners, but also with the global environment.

Nan Shan Life Insurance is transforming the health insurance landscape in Taiwan by creating innovative and comprehensive protection models.

The company launched spill-over insurance policies with diverse health insurance options that extends the insurance coverage to provide for daily hospital cash benefit, pay as you go, surgery, major illness, specific injuries and diseases like cancer, long-term care and suboptimal health status. In addition, it has designed a health facilitation reward mechanism to facilitate the insureds’ health management. As of April 2022, the company has 33 spill-over health insurance products, sold over 450,000 insurance policies and insured over 350,000.

It has allied with nearly 30 partners across the industry to build a health guardian circle, which is a mechanism established to facilitate the health needs of citizens across the nation. The Nan Shan Health Guardian Circle covers sports and fitness, diet and nutrition, medical care and mental health and the objective is to encourage the insureds to take preventive action instead of treatment. In 2021, the health guardian circle provided care services to 20,000 people cumulatively and the service was used by over 5,000 individuals.

Nan Shan Life also cooperated with Vogue magazine to advocate cancer prevention for women, and NGO Hope Foundation for Cancer Care, to conduct exhibitions highlighting women fighting cancer.

It established the Health Guardian Young Army that enhances the company’s agency capability as a health protection consultant. The company selected 800 agency talents from its nationwide offices to form this army. All members are provided with training, including professional certification courses in collaboration with nationwide medical centres.

Nan Shan Life encourages its clients to maintain a healthy lifestyle through walking and in 2021 held large-scale walking activities covering 19,000 trails, through the online-to-offline mechanism. It also collaborated with Wondercise to provide online fitness classes and services.

The company also advocates health awareness through mass media campaigns. In response to the United Nation’s SDGs goals, Nan Shan Life will continue to strive to create a more comprehensive and high-quality healthy life for the Taiwanese people.

Cathay Life Insurance (CLI) drives a comprehensive digital user experience based on a five digital rings strategy, which is focused on development of agents, business-tobusiness, customer, data and ESG.

The company created a user-centric service that guarantees both legal compliance and information security, while providing its customers with a new digital experience.

CLI has set the industry standard for the remote working model for insurance agents, representing a huge step forward into the digital era. The company launched the Cathay vision experience platform in Taiwan to offer its agents with a total solution to provide complete and remote insurance policy services, ranging from insurance underwriting to claims settlement.

In November 2021, the company launched the groupins+ platform, which is a one-stop digital platform for its corporate customers. groupins+ is a platform that allows its customers to pick, select and assemble the desired policies online and enjoy fast digital service for quotes. The company’s team adopted an agile development process and launched the minimum viable product in less than eight months. The company accumulated over 130,000 website visits and provided over 300 customised products and 12 scenario packages.

CLI launched a digital insurance policy platform that allows its customers to select from basic insurance modules and assemble insurance policies that are completely based on their specific needs. This has revolutionised the insurance purchase model in Taiwan from a product-push one to a demand-push one.

The company launched the Cathay Eye project which enables it to actively calculate risk scores through big data and AI modelling, dividing customers into high risk, medium risk and low risk groups.

In May 2022, the company further introduced a life score, with smart algorithms to provide a personalised health score based on daily behaviour, including sleep, steps and heart rate, as well as relevant health advice and tasks customers can follow.

The Singapore College of Insurance (SCI) continues to meet the growing training needs of both the local and regional markets, not only in traditional skills but in specialised areas like green insurance and sustainable risk management.

As part of its education masterplan on green insurance and sustainable risk management, the college launched an inaugural ASEAN GREEN research hackathon on green insurance and sustainable risk management to generate impactful ideas and create innovative solutions for a sustainable and green insurance sector. This followed SCI’s unveiling of a new SCI certificate in sustainable finance in insurance, the first of three certifications relating to sustainability and green insurance.

The hackathon was organised in collaboration with the ASEAN Insurance Council and supported by the LIA, GIA, SRA, Singapore Actuarial Society and APRIA. The event, which served as a prelude to the 4th ASEAN Insurance Summit held in October 2021, attracted an InsurTech startup which allowed the hackathon participants to leverage on their cloud platform under the technical challenge category.

The college also collaborated with Zurich University of Applied Sciences to jointly offer the executive certificate in green insurance and sustainable risk management and executive certificate in sustainable finance.

SCI, in order to build capacity and facilitate talent mobility, collaborated with a number of industry partners to launch the ASEAN School of InsurTech, Analytics & Innovation (AIAI), and ASEAN Professional Insurance Diploma. AIAI was conceptualised by SCI in partnership with the ASEAN Insurance Education Committee members to equip executives and managers with the necessary digital and human skills to support the ASEAN insurance industry’s digital transformation.

The college is also engaged by various companies to conduct their in-house programmes designed and delivered by SCI for their staff and insurance advisers. Such programmes were aligned with their divers business and talent development needs.

Swiss Re has been leveraging 150+ years of experience and knowledge while embracing its role in the new ecosystem. As one of the world’s largest and longest-standing L&H reinsurers, its clients benefit from the company’s wealth of expertise, experience and risk insights.

The reinsurer has been leading the way with data-driven insights to empower its clients’ growth aspirations and deliver added-value to end consumers. Its personal resilience score (PRS) developed as an holistic, modular and innovative risk assessment approach, and powered by Swiss Re’s underwriting manual, life guide. PRS augments traditional underwriting by leveraging wearable devices and other lifestyle-based data.

Responding to clients’ need for consistent claims decisionmaking combined into an easy-to-use consolidated claims platform, the company developed a claims automated rules engine. In Korea, the solution was applied to the newly released benefits of targeted therapy and anticancer hormone treatment.

In 2021, a year dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the reinsurer paid out claims amounting to $2.2bn.

Embracing the opportunity to play a pioneering role in closing the protection gap that leaves too many people vulnerable to uncertainty in their senior years, Swiss Re partnered with leading insurer NTUC Income in Singapore, on the first large scale longevity agreement in Southeast Asia. Its reinsurance solution helped the client cost for new risk, while its readiness to share in the risk reduced their uncertainty in venturing into the senior segment of the population.

Sharing its insights through targeted marketing and communications campaigns the reinsurer’s 2021 #InsightsForLife campaign generated more than 1m impressions and entailed 24 client events across the region. Overall, in 2021 Swiss Re retained a leading share of voice of 65% in APAC and reached an audience of approximately 264m via its regional media coverage. The reinsurer was also the co-host of the 2021 Pacific Insurance Conference, reinforcing its commitment to the region’s reinsurance market.

Recognising the societal impact of the pandemic, the reinsurer launched its second COVID-19 consumer survey across 12 markets in June 2021, to understand how COVID-19 has affected consumer behaviour, implications for the insurance industry, and how insurers can respond to evolving needs. The insights were shared via market events and tailored content via various media and digital platforms, drawing ~70 pieces of news coverage and 470k+ social impressions.

Munich Re has been a force to reckon with and is constantly pushing the boundaries of insurability to meet the evolving and complex needs of its clients in the Asian region.

With a quantum increase in in cyber attacks in Asia, triggered by the COVID-19 lockdowns and increased digitalisation, Munich Re’s expertise in modelling cyber risks is being honed through greater access to data and technologies. The reinsurer’s strategy, founded on data, know-how and consistent risk management, has made it a leading cyber risk carrier.

Munich Re has been pushing the boundaries with AI and has invested in developing a data analytics curriculum and hiring digital talent to exploit market opportunities through a sophisticated combination of insurance and data expertise.

The reinsurer’s unique cover called aiSure provides advice to AI providers in designing their performance guarantees, which relieves them of significant balance sheet risks, thus making them more attractive to investors and clients relying on the performance of algorithms. Another of its product, CertAI validation service, provides objective validation of trustworthy AI systems, thereby enhancing the acceptance of AI and paving the way for the responsible use of AI applications.

Munich Re has been addressing the specific needs of clients throughout Asia by tailoring solutions for specific markets. Aside from innovative product offerings, the reinsurer continued to engage the industry through numerous webinars and online workshops on critical topics during the pandemic.

Taking a leading position in ESG beyond the optimisation of economic key performance indicators, Munich Re is committed to creating long-term value for its shareholders, clients, staff and society.

Besides focusing on reducing CO2 emissions, the company has also been a driving force in energy transition, providing risk transfer solutions that promote the growth of established and proven, as well as new, green technologies. Its green tech solutions unit has a base in Hong Kong, which enabled it to underwrite risks in over 1,000 projects worldwide, with generation capacity totalling about 42 gigawatts.

Munich Re is also committed to improving diversity in the industry and aims to increase the percentage of women in management positions within the organisation from 35% in 2020 to 40% by 2025 and as of 2022 this stands at 38%.

Marsh Asia

Marsh Asia has been at the forefront in providing tailor made solutions for its different client segments. The broker’s thought leadership and deep understanding of markets have benefitted the insurance markets across Asia.

In 2021, Marsh further expanded its strategic talent pool, risk advisory capabilities and risk transfer solutions, aligning to specific industry needs to address pertinent risk management challenges.

The broker continues to strengthen its presence in Asia to support clients’ need for data-driven risk solutions and to help organisations build resilience and insurability in areas of ESG, cyber and business continuity. Its ESG risk rating tool, a first of its kind self-assessment tool in the insurance industry that scores a company’s ESG performance across 18 themes, has received over 600 client requests and produced more than 50 scorecards.

To help organisations improve their cyber risk profile, loss ratios, and insurability, Marsh developed cyber selfassessment (CSA), which provides better visibility of cyber vulnerabilities, accurately assess the implementation of cyber controls and enable actions to address these threats.

More than 140 organisations in Asia have participated in the CSA since 2021.

In its quest to support the clean energy transition, Marsh was named one of the main partners for Sun Cable’s Australia-Asia PowerLink — the world’s largest renewable energy project — that will provide solar energy for 15% of Singapore’s power needs. The broker also appointed a regional automotive and electric vehicle (EV) industry leader to focus on engaging insurers to implement innovative risk transfer solutions that go beyond traditional auto coverages for EV manufacturers.

Marsh launched its thought leadership and advisory campaigns related to critical risks, including P&C, business continuity, D&O and trade credit, through which it educated 500+ risk managers via webcasts and received 200+ requests for risk assessments.

Marsh’s tools and solutions play an influential role in helping organisations in Asia navigate volatility and build resilience amid emerging risks and a hardening insurance market, while partnering with insurers to adapt their offerings to meet evolving market needs.

Prudent Insurance Brokers Pvt Ltd

Prudent Insurance Brokers once again captured the attention of the judges for its all-round performance and hands on approach to its clients’ and market needs.

Over the last year, Prudent has taken multiple steps to enhance customer service, use modern techniques and technology, upgrade its skills and team and help move the industry and itself forward. In 2021-22, the firm registered 23% organic growth, which is significantly higher than the market growth rate of 11%.

In the midst of the pandemic, Prudent managed to transition 40% of its workforce by replacing it with more agile colleagues who are more capable in the use of data analytics and technology. This has happened without the termination or layoff of a single team member.

Prudent launched project Phoenix last year with a batch of 20 professionals who have three to five years’ work experience in hospitality, banking, or aviation and are ready to commit to a long-term career in insurance broking. After a rigorous training programme and one year of job rotation, team members chose a stream they felt comfortable in.

Some of its notable achievements over the past year include:

• Leading the Indian market in placing the largest public offering of securities insurance and advising more than 25 companies in their listing process
• Leading the Indian market in placing the largest brokered flexible benefits programme in India with more than 60,000 employees and $20m in premium, bringing need based, personalised and flexible options to suit the life stages of employees
• Brokered the largest global credit insurance programme in India with over $3m in premium and covering the risk of global subsidiaries across 65+ countries
• Managed and successfully assisted the insured in settlement of one of the largest business interruption claims under a cyber policy in record time

Cathay Life has been striving to mitigate environmental impact through low carbon insurance services and responsible investment and in 2022 stepped up its climate commitment and goal.

The company became the first life insurer in Taiwan to commit to 100% renewable electricity by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050. Through the organisational structure of climate governance, the company monitors climate risks and opportunities and promotes relevant climate actions.

In January 2022, Cathay Life committed to set sciencebased targets and began implementing a dual-path strategy of zero carbon operation transformation. The company has been promoting paperless operations for a decade and is the first in the insurance industry to receive the carbon reduction label. The company’s 2021 GHG inventory showed a 9% carbon emission drop, compared to 2020.

It is the first insurance company in Taiwan to establish ESG risk review procedures, establishing an exclusion list of controversial industries and a watch list of investments targets with potential ESG risks and adjusted investment strategies to actively support the international pledge to phase out coal power.

Continuing with its focus on solar power, the company has invested in around 250 solar power plants and plans to establish a comprehensive renewable energy to accelerate Taiwan’s energy transition.

Cathay Life leverages the power of the financial sector to act as a game changer in Taiwan’s transition to net zero and hopes to continue to collaborate with the industry, government and academia, as well as all stakeholders in achieving sustainability in the future.

bolttech’s insurance exchange is the largest technologyenabled insurance exchange in the world.

The InsurTech’s proprietary technology and capabilities behind its insurance exchange power an end-to-end insurance purchasing experience, from quote comparisons and underwriting approval to policy issuance, cross-sell and renewals, seamlessly integrating into its partner’s systems and customer journeys.

bolttech’s insurance exchange bypasses the need for expensive marketing campaigns, using a suite of innovative tech solutions that mitigate some of the classic challenges around renewal, upsell, and cross-sell. Any business from any sector can distribute insurance with the exchange and also leverage its complementary capabilities. Together with partners, it can innovate products, provide online to offline insurance services, and move beyond single-product offers to a better range of choice to meet their specific customers’ needs.

bolttech’s insurance partners in Asia include Home Credit in the Philippines, FWD Insurance in Hong Kong and Bangkok Insurance in Thailand. Its distribution partners in Asia include telcos such as 3HK and CSL Mobile in Hong Kong, electronics giants such as Samsung and LG U+, e-commerce leaders Lazada and Shopee and e-wallets like Rabbit LINE Pay, PayMaya, and JKOPay.

In 2021, bolttech partnered with telco dtac in Thailand to launch the dSurance platform in under two months. dSurance offers dtac’s 19.6m customers a range of personalised insurance products from eight insurers, making dtac a comprehensive one-stop shop for mobile and insurance needs. With dSurance, dtac saw an almost 900% increase in GWP in three months from $15,000 to $151,000 and also saw an overall platform conversion rate of 4.9% within two months.

ICEYE owns and operates the world’s largest synthetic aperture radar satellite constellation and is a leading global provider of persistent monitoring data.

With the insurance sector continually seeking more and better hazard data for complex, high-gradient perils such as flood, ICEYE bridges this data gap by combining satellite imagery with auxiliary data sources, including elevation models, river gauges and sensors, with meteorology/ insurance specialists using AI to generate consistent flood observation data in near real-time globally. The company delivers not only accurate flood extent footprints, but granular flood-depth measurements at the building level.

ICEYE established a team of insurance specialists, data analysts, hydrologists and meteorologists to develop a hazard-data insurance solution, partnering with leading practitioners, including Tokio Marine to align its capabilities with the sector’s specific flood data needs.

ICEYE’s Flood Insights product is the world’s first consistent, near-real-time source for flood hazard data, including accurate, high-resolution extent and depth measurements and is the company’s first solution developed exclusively for the insurance market.

Asia is a primary territory for the growth of ICEYE’s Flood Insights product, and it has already analysed multiple major flood events across the region in the last 12 months, including flooding from storm Dianmu in Thailand, flooding on the Samar Islands in the Philippines, flooding in Maharashtra, India, and flooding in southwestern Japan.

Beyond the Asia market, ICEYE has also established data partnerships across broking, insurance, reinsurance, capital management, and parametric solutions, including Swiss Re, Descartes Underwriting, Fermat Capital Management, EigenRisk, McKenzie Intelligence Services and Neptune Flood.

ICEYE also participated in the latest Lloyd’s Lab innovation accelerator programme.

FWD Insurance created FWD Care, a beyond-financial benefit to aid customers in their recovery through a major illness or the death of a loved one, provided at no cost to eligible customers.

FWD Care, through personal and human touch, eases the customers during the most challenging times of their lives and has achieved over 90% satisfaction rating from customers who have used it.

Through FWD Care, the insurer went beyond its traditional offerings in supporting its customers after a critical event that could effectively aid their recovery and is a complimentary offering that is provided at no cost to the insurers customers.

FWD Care started by equipping customers with a dedicated nurse as their companion and guide to navigate through critical life events. These nurses contact the customer as soon as a critical event claim is approved and stays virtually connected with them on a daily basis for up to six months. It is this personal and human touch that stands out in a world that’s more focused on automation.

The insurer has invested in hiring seasoned and highly skilled nurses as consultants in order to deliver high quality services while managing costs and engaging a partner experienced in providing non-traditional services. It has built everything from the ground up, frequently testing and validating its plans with customers to ensure relevance and appeal.

FWD Care has been launched in Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan and the company plans to launch it in the rest of its markets in 2022.

This initiative has been crucial in defining a unique space for FWD to own – care. A largely unsupported space in insurance, which the company knew had the potential to bring to life its vision of changing the way people feel about insurance.

The 10Life digital platform was created to educate the public on life insurance products and is relied by more than 500,000 policyholders and prospective policyholders in Hong Kong every month to research and buy insurance products.

The 10Life product decoder has been relied on by over 2m users a year and over 1,000 insurance intermediaries from insurance agencies and brokers are registered on the platform to build their online profiles and connect with potential policyholders.

The digital platform has also become a service provider of choice, as it helps insurance companies to obtain the latest market trends, design better products, provide product training to their agents and market and sell more policies. The platform is unique in that insurers with all types of distribution channels, including online, tied agency, brokerage and banks, can leverage it to drive awareness and to reduce acquisition costs.

10Life helped consumers to find the right solutions online during the COVID-19 pandemic, while providing insurance companies and intermediaries a channel to reach customers. The platform has helped its customers reduce misunderstandings on insurance products, find the right coverage and reduce their protection gap. Moreover, the competition it has created among insurance companies has reduced the costs of insurance in the market.

The InsurTech platform has partnered with over 30 insurers in the market and will continue to develop new solutions to reduce the protection gap and improve the reputation of the insurance industry.

Ms Annacel Natividad is the CFO of Pilmico Foods Corporation and is highly passionate about risk management and its implementation.

In 2021, she was appointed the CRO of the food group in addition to her role as CFO, a decision that was taken to overhaul the company’s existing systems and implement a full enterprise-wide risk management programme.

Ms Natividad came up with a roadmap for the implementation of the risk management programme that is consistent across the regional offices and facilities. On her recommendation, the board created a risk management committee and finalised the risk charter for the company. She has also been instrumental in the establishment of a risk culture that is consistent across the group and is mindful of the different culture in the countries where they operate.

She set up the risk management standards and framework, making sure that it is aligned with the Aboitiz risk framework and customised it based on the requirements of the food and agribusiness.

Ms Natividad set up the programme governance for risk engineering, where relevant internal stakeholders and subject matter experts meet on a regular basis to discuss the status and align action plans to address common risk engineering findings. In 2022, the group developed, discussed and cascaded new policies that would serve as the guiding principles at the mill-level in the areas of managing dust explosion exposures, fire protection and suppression systems, pallet management and use of noncombustible construction materials.

In January 2022, Ms Natividad was tapped to implement ESG across the food group, where she aligned sustainability with the vision of an integrated regional food and agribusiness company. Under her leadership, an ESG technical working group was formed with representation from the different departments and business units to develop the ESG roadmap for the food group.

She is a mentor for risk professionals in the Aboitiz Group and is a board director of PARIMA, participating in various activities to promote the risk profession and discipline.

The future of the insurance industry in Asia is in safe hands, as was revealed by our winner this year.

Mr Hassan Kassim was appointed managing director of Amana Takaful Insurance in May 2020 at a relatively young age of 32 and is also a director of Amana Takaful Life.

He stabilised the company from a financial and reputational crisis in 2020 and put it on a growth trajectory. The company had an average GWP growth of 33% in 2021, during which it also ramped up its market share by 29%. In the first quarter of 2022, the company had a GWP growth of 42% and managed to settle 86% of all claims within 48 hours.

Mr Kassim has taken a number of initiatives to optimise the company’s resource utilisation and corporate positioning and has a hands-on approach to the organisation’s operations. He was instrumental in bringing in new blood into the distribution team which acted as a catalyst and significantly contributed to a visible cultural shift within the organisation and its product and service offerings.

He was actively involved with the new-product development team, resulting in the launch of total drive prestige in 2021, a unique motor-insurance solution that ensures 100% claim settlement. This product was the first of its kind in the Sri Lankan industry.

Since early-2022, Mr Kassim has been at the forefront of the company’s digital project, heading the cross-functional committee that includes several heads of departments. The first step of this initiative is to launch a comprehensive mobile-app that would enable faster claim settlements.

Mr Kassim envisions a company that is closely connected to the hearts of the people – customers, employees and the general public, as he believes that the buildingblocks of insurance are moulded through strong mutual relationships.

The judges were unanimous in their choice for ‘woman leader of the year’ for her leadership and inspirational qualities.

Ms Loh Guat Lan currently leads Hong Leong Assurance (HLA) as its group managing director and CEO.

Ms Loh has over 30 years of experience in the life insurance industry, having spent 15 years of her career with HLA where she became its first woman COO and subsequently the company’s first woman CEO.

Under her stewardship, HLA has grown to be among the top five life insurers in Malaysia, having concluded the financial year 2020-2021 with RM3.1bn ($682m) in total gross premium and new business grew by over 30% compared to the previous year.

Ms Loh constantly emphasises on developing products and services that are strategically crafted to offer financial solutions that are unique to every individual’s needs. Over the last one year, she has focused on creating synergies between embracing digitalisation and the power of the human touch and has moved HLA to incorporate technology meaningfully into its business to improve the customer experience and agent engagement.

She also oversees HL Assurance Singapore, Hong Leong Insurance Hong Kong and Hong Leong Takaful. She was elected president of the Life Insurance Association of Malaysia for the third consecutive term in 2022-2023.

Ms Loh is also an internationally acclaimed speaker and shares her insights and thoughts at major life conferences worldwide.

Mr Mark Saunders is known as a visionary leader who has contributed to the growth and development of the insurance industry across Asia.

He has spent 35 years in leadership positions in the insurance industry and most recently eight years as a group executive committee member of AIA, prior to which he spent 17 years as principal and managing director at TillinghastTowersWatson with responsibility for the AsiaPacific insurance sector and the Hong Kong office. For 10 years prior to joining TowersWatson he was with UK insurer, Clerical Medical, working in Asia from 1989 and becoming its Hong Kong CEO.

At the AIA Group, he was responsible for the group’s corporate solutions, group life and health and healthcare businesses across all 18 markets and simultaneously held the position of group CMO securing major group corporate sponsorships and transforming the brand.

He is an inspirational, energetic, engaging leader and passionate promoter and ardent advocate of the good of insurance and driving evolution of the industry to proactively manage morbidity and mortality risk to create shared value for the benefit of, and positive impact on, people, organisations, and societies and economies of Asia. He is a strong proponent of the fact that insurance done in the right way with the right people is a force for good.

Over the years he has been an active presenter sharing thoughts and insights at industry forums, events and committees and is also a facilitator of the professionalism courses for both the IFoA and the SOA.

Mr Saunders, post his retirement, continues actively to lead sessions at schools, universities, and industry forums, most recently presenting on professionalism at the International Actuarial Colloquium and to students about the good of insurance.