Vietnam has permitted local insurance companies to use chartered capital to make overseas investment with written approval of the Finance Ministry, local newspaper Vietnam Investment Review reported on Monday.
Previously, local insurers' chartered capital was only used to invest in domestic channels such as banking deposits, treasury bonds and the stock market. The insurers currently have total chartered capital of 15 trillion Vietnamese dong (VND) (937.5 million U.S. dollars), which is expected to surge to 20 trillion VND (1.25 billion dollars) by mid-2008.
Now, most of local insurance firms are not ready for overseas investment as they lack expertise.
Vietnam's life insurance premium revenues stood at 6,732 billion VND (nearly 420.8 million dollars) in the first nine months of 2007, posting a year-year-year increase of 11.6 percent, Phung Dac Loc, general secretary of the Vietnam Insurance
Association, told Xinhua recently. Meanwhile, non-life premium revenues reached a five-year record high of 5,925 billion VND (370.3 million dollars), up 31 percent.
Vietnam currently houses a total of 30 insurance companies, including seven life insurers and 23 non-life ones, he said, noting that the country has six foreign-invested life insurers, and 10 foreign-backed non-life insurers.
Source:Xinhua
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