China Insurance (holdings ) Co. Ltd. (CIH), the country's overseas insurance business flagship, has decided to place its strategic focus on the domestic market in the forthcoming years.

"Currently, the domestic market is seeing faster growth in business volume and network construction than overseas markets," Saturday's China Daily cited CIH President Lin Fan as saying.

"In the future, we will focus on the domestic market while bringing along overseas markets," Lin said.

In accordance with a plan for the five years ending 2010, CIH is hoping to triple its assets to 107 billion yuan (13.2 billion U.S. dollars), from 35.9 billion yuan at the end of last year. Net assets are expected at 6.2 billion yuan by 2010, bringing returns of 10-15 percent. Premiums are also expected to double.

"This is an arduous target, but we are confident of meeting it, " the newspaper quoted Feng Xiaozeng, chairman of CIH, which owns Hong Kong-listed China Insurance International Holdings (CIIH), as saying.

CIH, which now owns 19 subsidiaries and has operations in foreign markets such as the United Kingdom and Singapore, is still recovering from losses incurred during the Asian financial crisis that swept the region at the end of the last century. CIIH, for instance, reported 43.7 million Hong Kong dollars of losses from the first half of last year.

High hopes are pinned on Taiping Insurance, which sells primarily property insurance, and Taiping Life, CIH's major operations in the home market.

Lin said if the two firms could break even this year as planned, "it will make this year a major turnaround for CIH."

Taiping Insurance aims to break even this year by both Hong Kong and mainland accounting standards, and Taiping Life will try to break even under Hong Kong accounting rules.

"If the two companies can break even (this year), then CIIH will likely make a profit," said Ng Yu Lam, director and chief executive office of CIIH, which owns 30.05 percent of Taiping Insurance and 50.05 percent of Taiping Life.

In overseas markets, CIH plans to establish three regional management centers. The Hong Kong and Macao property insurance center will be based on Ming An Insurance Co (China) Ltd., the Southeast Asia and Oceania regional center will center on China Insurance (Singapore) Co Ltd. and the European regional center on China Insurance (UK) Co. Ltd.

Source: Xinhua