Taiwan Life Insurance has become the island's first insurance company to venture into the health-resort and healthcare sector.
The health and retirement village is planned to be launched within a year. The related investment proposal has been sent to the Financial Supervisory Commission for approval, reported Economic Daily News. Regulatory approval is required because this field is currently not within the scope of business that the insurance industry is permitted to engage in.
Taiwan Life general manager Mr Chuang Chung-Ching said that the company plans to establish a 100% owned subsidiary with a capital of NT$60m ($1.88m) to undertake the venture. Plans include setting up high-end health villages, with priority in access given to Taiwan Life‘s policyholders. Mr Chuang also said that the concept is to establish a health and lifestyle community to integrate “Live Healthily, Age Well” services.
Mr Yeh Pai-Hung, Taiwan Life's chief strategy officer, said that the health village business will be piloted first in Tainan, a city in southern Taiwan. He added that the subsidiary will be responsible for operating the health village and hence, it will not be an asset-heavy company. Residential units in the retirement village will be rented out.
While the start-up capital is NT$60m, the insurer will evaluate later whether the business needs to be expanded and whether more capital needs to be injected into the venture.
Taiwan Life, which is a subsidiary of the financial holding company, CTBC Holding, currently has a total of 2.2m policyholders. In addition, there are tens of millions of customers of CTBC Bank, also a part of the Group.