28th Asia Insurance Industry Awards 2024

For over six decades, Nan Shan Life has steadfastly upheld its promise of sustainable protection for its policyholders and the society. It upheld its corporate mission of ‘Nan Shan as the source of excellent insurance and the backer of good health’ and adapted to social changes with two core transformations: ‘service empowerment’ and ‘digital empowerment’.

Through service empowerment, Nan Shan Life integrates products with resources from health protection partners to provide comprehensive value-added services to customers. Meanwhile, digital empowerment enhances data analytics and insurance technology, offering segmented, personalised products and digital services that maximise the value of insurance beyond financial compensation, both before and after claims.

The company also launched innovative products to tackle the aging society in Taiwan, as well as the low-birth rate crisis. Further, it used technology and AI to lower hospital costs, improve claims processes and cross the language barrier for immigrant families.

As Nan Shan Life enters its 61st year, it is pioneering a new generation of insurance and services. With the grand opening of the Taipei Customer Service Centre, built on the philosophy of a ‘Total Friendly Experience’, this centre will serve as a model for Nan Shan’s customer service across Taiwan. It showcases the insurer’s vision for the future of insurance.

Nan Shan Life remains committed to making insurance services more accessible and user-friendly. By working hand-in-hand with policyholders and the broader community, it continues to strive for a healthier, brighter future for all.

Ergo Insurance (Thailand) Public Company Limited

ERGO Thailand is playing the leading role in consolidating the scattered Thai non-Life insurance market in a way not seen before.

After employing around 200 insurance managers from Southeast Insurance in 2022, ERGO Thailand acquired and merged with Nam Seng Insurance in 2023, fully integrating them in September 2023. In December 2023, ERGO Thailand additionally announced to offer employment to roughly 800 staff from Syn Mun Kong Insurance (SMK).

As SMK had to cease its underwriting activities, ERGO Thailand initiated the large strategic move to onboard majority of SMK’s staff and former agents. The initiative to onboard such number of additional staff is unseen in the market before and brings ERGO Thailand on a new level of scale and capabilities.

These strategic moves, coming together with other organic measures such as doubling the nationwide branch network, moved ERGO Thailand into one of the market leading companies in the nation.

Although undergoing several mentioned growth projects at the same time, ERGO Thailand managed to reach its target for sustainable growth, aiming to deliver competitive combined ratios and technical underwriting margins. This went in line with continuous improvements in underwriting excellence and strict operational cost monitoring.

As a strong brand with stable shareholding structure and access to capital, ERGO Thailand outperforms the market not only in terms of growth, underwriting excellence and customer service projects, but puts highest efforts into creating a leading-edge governance system, meeting requirements not only from local regulators, but also excelling in an international insurance group environment.

Go Digit General Insurance Limited

Since its inception in 2017, Digit General Insurance has seen growth that has impressed many. A core business idea of bringing simplified insurance solutions to the tier-2 and tier-3 cities and villages of India has allowed it to become one of the fastest growing general insurers in the nation.

In a short span of 6.5 years, Digit took this mission of simplifying insurance to Indians and saw massive response all across India, including a massively oversubscribed IPO at 960%.

Digit’s vision is to bring back the trust between the insurer and the insured. It began to change the way non-life insurance products are understood and experienced by consumers and distributors in India. By simplifying insurance, Digit believed that it could establish trust and create meaningful relationships with customers and distribution partners.

Today, it is one of India’s leading digital full-stack insurance companies; a feat it has achieved by leveraging technology to fuel its innovative approach to product design, distribution and customer experience in the general insurance segment.

Technology is at the core of Digit’s business model, and it deploys a combination of insurance and technology solutions to assist in enrolment, insurance claims processing, underwriting, policy administration, data insights, and fraud detection.

It has combined its expertise in the general insurance market with its data bank to build extensive underwriting models that it uses to accurately assess risk and predict losses for its motor insurance products at a granular level.

At the same time, it has around 459 active AI-driven microsystems to automate processes for the benefit of its partners and customers. Digit’s platform is entirely cloud-based, making its system agile, connected, and scalable.

AIA Singapore’s goal as the leading life insurer is to help Singaporeans live healthier, longer, better lives, with its strategy of establishing a framework of solutions that individuals can easily implement to fulfil their needs as well, to create awareness and consideration.

It recognised its responsibility to empower Singaporeans towards holistic wellness. Identifying critical gaps in healthcare management, AIA continued to collaborate with healthcare providers to improve customers’ access to quality healthcare services while maintaining sensitivity to the challenges of rising healthcare costs.

It has also enhanced our health and wellness proposition through digital integrations, particularly through its wellness membership programme, AIA Vitality. It encourages members to adopt healthier lifestyles and represents a transformative business model that shifted its role from a traditional payer to a progressive partner, now emulated by other major insurers. The programme’s success is bolstered by partnerships with well-known brands, offering online assessments and annual health screenings at partner clinics, improving wellness awareness and accessibility.

AIA also launched Think Well, the region’s first insurer-backed digital mental health solution for corporate policyholders in partnership with telehealth provider WhiteCoat Global. Users can make self-assessments, consult qualified mental health professionals in real-time, and access a library of resources.

It also launched products to cover neurological diseases, allowing payouts for early, intermediate and even last stage Alzheimer’s disease/severe dementia and idiopathic Parkinson’s disease, while rolling out awareness campaigns particularly amongst senior generations.

AIA also introduced the AIA Ultimate Critical Cover to make critical illness coverage more accessible and affordable for young adults. Covering 150 medical conditions and 73 critical illnesses across all stages, it is the market’s first to provide unlimited reset benefit.

FWD Singapore Pte Ltd

FWD Singapore is focused on making insurance simple, fast and smooth. It brings relevant, distinctive, and personalised propositions, develops easy-to-understand products, supported by digital technology, to customers and financial advisory partners.

FWD is one of the first insurers to provide a directto-consumer platform that allows customers to buy their preferred life and general insurance products from its website and get covered instantly. In 2020, FWD brought the same digital-led spirit to offline advisory when it launched its financial advisory.

It has a strategic blueprint to become an insurer of the future catering to customers’ evolving needs. Six out of seven components are anchored around digital solutions.

To achieve seamless and easy customer experience when it comes to customer acquisition, FWD has in-corporated digital technology and has a fully integrated digital ecosystem, comprising mobile application, ecommerce website/platform, as well as customer management systems for both online and financial advisory partners channels.

FWD’s commitment to being digital led goes beyond customer acquisition. The company strategically integrates digital solutions into policy servicing and claims processes, simplifying and enhancing after-sales service convenience for its customers and partners. The company uses robotic process automation to automate rule-based tasks, ensuring efficient processing of policy requests.

All policy management forms, claims and more can be accessed, filled in and submitted digitally, further enhancing convenience for customers and partners.

FWD has invested in an AI-enabled chatbot named Faith, which addresses customers’ common inquiries. Based on the data collected from top customer concerns, FWD enhances the FAQs so customers get real-time assistance to their enquiries, most helpful especially during non-office hours.

FWD integrates digital solutions to enhance efficiency, streamline processes, and improve compliance.

Kakaopay Insurance

Kakaopay Insurance was established in 2022 in South Korea and is the fastest-growing digital insurer in the country.

The company’s mission is to digitalise insurance industry by simplifying the insurance customer journey and making insurance services more convenient and beneficial to its customers. To make insurance easier to access, the company provides end-to-end insurance service digitally via Korea’s top messenger app called KakaoTalk. The company also provides additional services that utilise various functions of the messenger to maximise convenience and benefits to its customers.

Kakaotalk is often referred to as the Korean version of Whatsapp, is used by 41m people, which is 80% of the nation’s entire population. It has evolved from a messenger app to a super app with services such as payment, digital wallet, commerce, games and maps.

The insurer has been the fastest growing digital insurer in the country since 2023, with the number of customers increasing at an average monthly growth rate of 40% since the launch of its first product, and it has reached 1m in just 14 months since the company was established. Such growth rate and speed are unprecedented in Korea, where digital penetration of insurance is less than 2%.

Kakaopay is the first insurer in Korea to use business account chatting room of a messenger app as the major service platform for the entire value chain. The insurer became the market leader in the Korean overseas travel insurance market in just six months after launching the product. The company’s driver insurance, launched in March 2024, also recorded the highest sales among competitors right after it was launched.

The Association of Indonesian Qualified Insurance and Reinsurance Brokers (APARI) celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2023, since its establishment, it has continued to produce insurance and reinsurance broker experts by facilitating high-quality education programs, creating a forum to support continuing professional development through seminars, workshops and training.

APARI’s enthusiasm and commitment remained high even through the COVID-19 pandemic, and its membership continued to grow over the past four years, with over 5,000 members today. This has enabled it to be recognised as the leading insurance professional association in Indonesia, raising the bar higher in standards of excellence in education and training.

As a non-profit organisation, APARI’s management team are all volunteers. Despite this, they are all committed to producing (re)insurance broking experts, and to advance the industry, increase the competency of members, and innovate according to the needs of the current and future era.

APARI has also continued to stand by its promise to address the issues and challenges facing the industry, not only in Indonesia, but its connections within the wider Southeast Asia and Asia Pacific regions.

APARI has programmes on AI and technological innovation, addressing cyber threats, fraud and AI integration. It also conducted an international seminar in July 2023 to address the need for more clarity on ESG and climate risks requested by its members, as well as by the wider community.

RGA partners with clients to address unique market challenges through holistic reinsurance solutions. Celebrating its 50th anniversary globally, the reinsurer has maintained its steadfast commitment to client success and innovation excellence across the region.

To better serve Asia’s rapidly ageing population, RGA partnered with insurers across the region to develop senior-focused products and underwriting innovations, including several successful marketfirst offerings. In South Korea, RGA launched a market-first inclusive cancer treatment product with three leading insurers in early 2024 that shifted the product paradigm from diagnosis-based payout to treatment-based payout in this market. In Japan, RGA’s pricing expertise helped refine the preferred mortality rates on a decreasing-term product to enhance an insurer’s market competitiveness, delighting distributors and achieving better-than expected sales.

In China, Singapore and Thailand, RGA continued to stretch the boundaries of conventional health insurance – from offering simplified issuance, to expanding coverage on advanced cancer drugs not covered in the public health scheme, to providing comprehensive medical coverage for CI survivors. In the mature market of Hong Kong, RGA continued to fill identified protection gaps, resulting in a participating CI product that provides protection relevant to every life stage of the insured, from newborn to senior.

For more mature life insurance markets like Japan, RGA launched ARIUS, a digital tool that provides instant facultative underwriting decisions. In addition to underwriting expertise, RGA also provided superior service to clients, greatly increasing confidence in their underwriting operation. RGA further expanded ARIUS into medical insurance, opening a new market for facultative underwriting.

In 2023, RGA launched its first global mental health survey. This comprehensive report explored insurers’ readiness to expand mental health services and shared thought.

Everest Reinsurance Company

Everest Re is a leader in the global P&C market with a 50-year track record. The reinsurer’s business in 2023 grew by 20.9% globally and by 40.6% in Asia Pacific. The reinsurer’s commitment to corporate responsibility emanates throughout the organisation, and its dedication to ESG issues magnifies the impact they have on society as well as in the communities it serves.

Everest Re’s solutions and services are available in 20+ countries of Asia Pacific, which it serves from its Singapore office which was established in 1997. The company is a meaningful Nat CAT capacity provider in Asia backed by a well-rated and strong balance sheet.

Most of the company’s talent in Singapore is homegrown, locally empowered and have significant experience in various Asian markets thus bringing a closer understanding with the challenges that its clients and brokers face.

Its purpose-driven mission to underwrite opportunity for those who need it most is intrinsically tied to its performance and value creation strategy. The reinsurer’s investments to further this mission have made a positive impact within the company and in the communities where they live, work and serve.

The reinsurer leverages the strength of its back office digital platforms to improve its customers’ claims experience – from data capture to accelerated decision making. Its in-country teams are supported by Everest’s in-house claims experts with deep domain knowledge for losses which are very high value or complex in nature.

The reinsurer regularly conducts events, workshops, forums for its clients, through which it teaches and educates them about what is happening across the world.

Munich Re

Munich Re’s innovative product offerings tackle the biggest issues that their clients are facing.

In India, Munich Re identified that parametric insurance, designed to pay out to policyholders as soon as triggers are breached, has worked to address lengthy claims processes.

In Australia and New Zealand, the reinsurer’s location risk intelligence tool allowed banks to identify, measure and manage their exposures to the physical risks of climate change.

In South Korea, Munich Re has an initiative aimed at addressing issues faced by the rapidly ageing population. Coupled with a high digital penetration, these active seniors are particularly vulnerable to cyber crime.

Across Southeast Asia, Munich Re supports MSMEs through innovative insurance solutions. These solutions seek to strengthen the financial resilience of these businesses against unforeseen loss events.

Another fundamental component of its business activities includes ESG considerations, with the focus on increasing the percentage of women in management and decarbonising its investment and insurance portfolios. The company has nearly met the target for 2025, i.e. 40% of management positions within the group being held by women. By the end of 2023, this figure reached 39.5%.

The reinsurer also made considerable progress last year on decarbonisation. In its insurance business, greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants and thermal coal production facilities have each decreased by 41% compared with the 2019 base year, while emissions from oil and gas production associated with its property insurance business have been reduced by as much as 80%.

Munich Re has supported impactful social engagement activities that have made a significant difference in the lives of individuals and communities. The reinsurer has grown strongly and profitably in Asia Pacific in recent years.

The statement ‘we transform tomorrow’ encompasses WTW’s philosophy, work-culture and future-focussed orientation. The company aspires to be Asia’s best risk adviser, specialty broker and client partner. It works to create more value than its competitors and better serving the needs of its clients in Asia.

It also works to make WTW the best company for its employees. With its excellence spanning across its business performance, innovations, specialisation and talent. The insurance broking company has achieved consistent double-digit growth in Asia over the last three years.

WTW fosters strong partnerships with its clients to ensure it understands their unique and specific risk profile, that facilitates tailored solutions that fit their required parameters around risk appetite, programme cost, sustainability and agility.

Central to its strategy is the commitment to combine data from its digitalised platforms with advanced modelling capabilities. The WTW Broking Platform collects, aggregates and interrogates proprietary risk data. This enables providing the best insights to its clients to help them understand, mitigate or transfer risk and help us align their risks with innovative solutions.

This also helps close the insurance gaps many companies face due to overly generic insurance solutions and services that create uncertainty and inefficiency because they are not industry specific.

The company’s Asia team of 40 specialists in the risk and analytics units with diverse expertise including accountants, actuaries, climate and natural catastrophe specialists, risk engineers, and claims and captive experts (and more than 500 globally) helps improve the outcomes for its over 400 clients in the continent.

WTW plans to double its business portfolio over a five-year period (2022-2026) and to achieve it has over the last 12 months, hired close to 180 employees across its corporate risk and broking Asia business.

Cathay Life Insurance Taiwan is Asia’s first life insurance company to follow the Principles of Sustainable Insurance since 2016. It promotes sustainability initiatives focused on three pillars – climate, health and empowerment.

The life insurer is also the first life insurance company in Taiwan to pledge renewable electricity RE100 by 2030 and net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, at all its domestic branches by 2030 and at all its overseas branches by 2050. In 2022, the company committed to net zero, ensuring progress through the climate governance structure and senior management KPIs.

To achieve the target of net zero by 2050, it has engaged in a multitude of green actions and monitoring climate risks and exploring opportunities to promote climate actions.

As one of Taiwan’s most influential financial institution, Cathay Life actively responds to the COP28 climate finance consensus. In addition, the company is actively building a ‘green ecosystem’ to drive partners toward net-zero transformation through investments, operations and technology.

By leveraging its corporate financial influence, green energy supply, and digital transformation, the company helps its upstream and downstream partners in reducing carbon emissions, building infrastructure, and adapting to climate change.

The insurer’s future outlook emphasises on facing climate change, biodiversity loss and environment impacts on company operations, and leverages the company’s influence to propel Taiwan towards netzero carbon emissions.

The company also avoids holding controversial assets and the risk of stranded assets. It has implemented a climate tool to assess enterprise low-carbon progress, provide necessary support to enterprises actively transitioning, and expand divestment plans for coal and unconventional oil and gas sectors.

It focuses to strengthen ongoing collaboration among academia, government, and industry, and collaborate with other subsidiaries, clients and businesses to foster a sustainable future.

Established in 2021, the InsurTech discovermarket has significant presence across Southeast Asia. The InsurTech’s technology platform and business blueprint has enabled a truly digital insurance experience, making insurance affordable, accessible, and attractive for over 200m customers across Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia.

The company’s flagship discovermarket platform, is a cloud-based, API-enabled, and nocode solution that empowers brokers, insurers, and service providers to deliver embedded insurance at scale to unreachable and untapped customer segments by leveraging meaningful ecosystems and digital platforms.

With one single platform, discovermarket orchestrates the entire insurance value chain, by facilitating seamless onboarding of partners, intuitive product configuration through simple drag and drop features, customer journey integration, policy lifecycle management, claims registration and portfolio performance management.

The platform also offers pre-built integrations with global data sources to track rain, temperature, typhoons, air quality, soil moisture, solar energy to offer innovative parametric insurance propositions. By harnessing the power of AI and open-source data, the platform is able to intelligently identify customers’ insurance needs, ensuring timely and relevant product recommendations.

The platform has attracted ecosystem partners to build unique insurance products across various sectors, including telecommunication, hospitality, and agriculture. The global weather data integrations and parametric claim capabilities allow insurers an ease of re-use and a ‘plug and play’ go live for other parametric weather products. Partnering with insurance brokers and telecom the InsurTech offers cyber crime protection for corporate and retail customers.

The cutting-edge technology, integrated approach and profound insurance expertise, empowered by the consultative approach, enables the ecosystem partners to navigate into previously inaccessible customer segments.

The InsurTech discovermarket, through its flagship marketplace-as-a-service platform, partners with ecosystem providers to ensure easy access to unique insurance products.

Also, technology’s real-time and automatic notification of the claim process, coupled with seamless integration via APIs, enables discovermarket to expand its offerings to address a wide range of adverse weather use cases across Southeast Asia, ensuring continued resilience and satisfaction for both businesses and travellers alike.

It offers parametric solutions for the hospitality industry for Southeast Asia’s weather challenges such as high temperatures, humidity, and unpredictable rainfall throughout the year.

On average, it rains 171 days per year in Singapore and the hospitality industry grapples with the impact of unpredictable weather conditions, as travellers may find it less appealing to book trips or experience disruptions to their travel plans.

The platform is powered by discovermarket’s seamless integration with weather data, insurers and brokers. The entire claims process is automated, providing guests with a streamlined and comprehensive protection experience.

The platform also helps in balancing the need for outdoor activities with the necessity of seeking shelter from sudden downpours, that pose a constant challenge for both residents and travellers in Singapore.

Also, to combat cyber risks, discovermarket has partnered with a leading broker and a telecom giant to introduce CyberSecure – a tailored cyber crime protection product for corporate clients in the Philippines. CyberSecure protects businesses against a cyber attack and its consequential financial and non-financial losses.

The innovative use case of parametric products is just the beginning of the platform’s potential to elevate customer experiences across industries.

As Taiwan gradually becomes an aged society, the elderly population’s demand for insurance covers rises. In an internal review study, Taiwan Life Insurance reviewed the insurance sales process for elderly customers.

The review study discovered that the first-time success rate of insurance sales voice recordings between sales agents and elderly customers is relatively low (currently 50%-60%). Failed recordings need to be re-recorded and the agent needs to find time to make another customer appointment for the new recording, leading to a poor customer experience and inconveniencing elderly customers.

To solve this issue, the insurer identified customer pain points through an end-to-end method and proposed the smart AI verification of elderly voice recordings project to improve the first-time success rate for elderly voice recordings.

The smart AI verification of elderly voice recordings project is an industry first. Using speech-totext, text-to-speech, and text verification AI technologies, the company designed a voicebotguided process where automatic speech recognition technology turns the audio file of the interview between the sales agent and the elderly customer into text in real time.

Through online evaluation, prompts to make corrections, and a re-record function, the process helps increase the success rate of voice recordings, reducing the hassle of requiring a new recording as well as improving risk management.

Smart AI verification of elderly voice recordings was launched in June 2023. As of 31 December 2023, recordings for more than 1,253 elderly insurance cases have been successfully quality-verified online.

The proportion of cases needing new recordings has fallen from 40% to 17% and 23% of elderly customers no longer need to inconveniently make a new recording. They enjoy a better customer experience. AI assistance has increased the work efficiency of back-end review officers by 30%.

APRIL International (APRIL) is at the forefront of innovative health insurance solutions, expanding access to affordable, quality healthcare across Asia and beyond. As a prominent healthcare provider in international private health insurance, APRIL’s agile and flexible approach to healthcare has continually raised industry standards.

Its portfolio exemplifies APRIL’s tailored approach, with products such as MyHEALTH that provides flexible individual plans that can be customised based on financial needs and medical requirements. PallasHEALTH delivers top-tier coverage for individuals seeking high-level healthcare protection. For businesses, MyHEALTH Business and YourHEALTH respectively serve SMEs and large corporations with flexible or fully customised options.

APRIL ON, its broker management platform launched in 2023 offers continuous technical upgrades in line with its active strategy of gathering and responding to brokers’ feedback. These enhancements not only boost the platform’s performance but also assist brokers in delivering their services more effectively. As a result, the platform has reduced the processing time for underwriting applications by a significant 60%.

APRIL’s regional teams pioneered Easy Claim’s development. The app allows unlimited paperless claim submissions simply by uploading photos of their invoices. On the operational aspect, it removes manual data entry, speeding average processing time three times faster from receipt. All claims are treated within 10 working days.

Recognising the continuing challenges of rising medical costs, the company has expanded its medical network to over 11,000 providers through prudent partnerships to provide members with quality care at optimised prices. By expanding its exclusive medical network and tailoring plans that address clients’ most pressing healthcare priorities, APRIL ensures clients receive sustainable and costeffective international health insurance plans that are personalised to their needs.

Ms Narayanan is presently the head of risk and insurance (R&I), APAC and interim head of R&I, EMEA at Revantage, a portfolio company of The Blackstone Group that provides corporate services to multiple Blackstone real estate portfolio companies.

She has been with the company since 2022 and is also a PARIMA board member and has held that position since 2016.

Like many risk professionals, she fell into the industry two decades ago, and it has given her a profound sense of purpose and passion as she has evolved through the course of her career.

At Revantage, Ms Narayanan has applied her unique framework centred on the 5Cs, a set of values that she developed, dedicated to pursuing excellence.

The 5Cs are focused on:

• Cost: Continually looking for ways to optimise total cost of risk
• Clarity: Implementing focused and concise risk management initiatives that meet the needs of the organisation
• Communication: Clear and consistent dialogue with stakeholders
• Commitment: Unwavering dedication to her team, industry and organisation
• Culture: Embracing and celebrating diversity within countries and teams

With her global responsibilities, she takes great pride in building cross-cultural connections. Understanding the unique dynamics of different countries has been part of forming strong relationships both within the organisation and across the industry.

Curiosity and empathy are at the heart of her approach to navigating cross-cultural interactions, and she strives to practice these traits every day. This approach has been crucial in building and managing a team in India, integrating operations in Australia with Asia and leading a team of six in London, each requiring thoughtful and careful handling.

The Young Leader of the Year for 2024 is Allianz Insurance Singapore CEO Hicham Raissi.

He is a dynamic and visionary leader originally from Morocco and has been a welcome addition to Singapore’s insurance industry since becoming CEO of Allianz Insurance Singapore (Allianz) at the age of 36 in 2019. Despite being new to Singapore, under his guidance, Allianz has emerged as one of Singapore’s fastest-growing general insurance companies.

In just three years, Allianz reached the S$100m annual GWP milestone, representing 275% growth from 2021 to 2023, significantly outpacing the market growth of 36.7% during the same period. Allianz also became the third largest motor insurer within three years – a feat unprecedented in over 20 years in the Singapore general insurance market.

This rapid expansion was driven by Allianz’s remarkable growth of its distributor network, built virtually from scratch in 2020, to 60 broker firms, 4,128 IFA representatives, and 182 agents as of February 2024.

Mr Raissi’s innovative mindset led to the launch of Allianz Electric Motor Protect in 2022, the first product of its kind in the market, through a strategic alliance with the Tesla Owners Club, positioning Allianz as a thought leader in EV insurance in Singapore. His passion for creating a dynamic, innovative, meritocratic, and inclusive workplace resulted in Allianz becoming the first major insurer to win the Great Place to Work certification in 2023, with a record 85% engagement score and a 90%+ participation rate.

The Woman Leader of the Year for 2024 is Myanma Insurance managing director Sandar Oo. She is also the chair of Myanmar Insurance Association.

Previously, Dr Oo served as a director general of Central Bank of Myanmar and financial regulatory department between 2013 and 2015. She brings over 30 years of experience in economic affairs both as a practitioner and scholar. Prior to being a central banker, she spent 27 years at the Yangon University of Economics holding positions including prorector between 2012 and 2013 and professor between 1986 and 2012.

Under her leadership, Myanmar insurance industry premium growth has increased, and the insurance penetration rate is increasing. This has led to a wellestablished insurance market with strong economic growth.

After she fully accomplished setting out the road map for liberalising the insurance market, she was assigned as managing director of Myanma Insurance in 2017. Although changing from regulator’s role to the player’s role, she performed her responsibilities with excellent initiatives.

She is known for her innovative approach to leadership. She fosters a culture of creativity and continuous improvement, encouraging the team to think outside the box and pursue excellence. She performs well for the whole insurance company, and she has led the organisation with many initiatives including making agreements for the digitalisation process of Myanma Insurance and expanding the organisation structure.

She also implemented the ASEAN Compulsory Motor Insurance system to make easier and faster to cooperate in the acceptance and payment of third-party damage insurance for vehicles crossing the ASEAN border under Protocol 5 of the ASEAN Framework Agreement on the Facilitation of Goods in Transit.

This year’s Lifetime Achievement Award is presented to Mr Mark O’Dell.

Retiring from corporate life in 2018, Mr O’Dell went on to give back to the industry, becoming the first CEO of the Life Insurance Association of Malaysia in 2019, a position he still holds today.

He has 44 years of experience in the life insurance industry with 30 years in Asia, where he notably held positions of CEO/GM for nearly 20 years in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Taiwan.

He started his career as a life insurance agent in 1980, becoming one of the youngest unit managers in Prudential at age 23.

He joined AIA in Singapore in 1994 where he spent 14 years, starting as an agency director in Singapore, moving to Indonesia in 1996. In 2000 he was promoted to GM of AIA Malaysia. During his four years in Malaysia, he returned the company to growth following a protracted dispute with the agency force which began before his arrival.

In 2004, he was promoted again to GM in AIA Singapore. Arriving on the scene he was faced with regulatory disciplinary actions resulting from prior management’s failure to address previously noted weaknesses.

In 2008, he joined Manulife in Taiwan heading its life insurance and asset management businesses. He successfully navigated the company through the 2008 financial crisis as well as integrating an acquired local asset management company.

In 2016, he became both the CEO and ED of Manulife Insurance in Malaysia and led the life company to strong growth, entered an exclusive bank assurance arrangement with Alliance Bank.