More foreign investment and industry growth is envisaged with Sri Lanka life insurance industry poised to adopt the global accounting standard for insurance contracts, IFRS 17, panelist opined at the CT Smith Securities investor forum titled ‘Navigating Growth and Value in Life Insurance,’ held recently in Colombo.
Today’s IFRS 4 focuses on a company’s stock price and gross written premium (GWP), but lacks correlation to its value creation. Profitability in insurance is assessed by assets and excess cash over reserve liabilities. A growing company may show flat profitability due to new business claims, leading to challenges for analysts and investors, Senath Jayatilake, CEO Union Assurance said.
He said IFRS 17 introduces insurance services revenue, emphasizing margins and future profitability. This enhances transparency and comparability across the industry, inviting foreign investments and allowing customers to evaluate financial stability, crucial for life insurance promises.
Jayatilake said that they take a view that this industry is still a heavily under-factored industry. There is a lot more upside for this industry that is not really harnessed and harnessing that potential is a problem. However, with the change in IFRS standard, the solvency standards will also change in the long run.
“ With that, we may see situations where consolidation may happen. And that is limited to that of each organisation’s strategic focus, even expansions outside of the country. But I think whilst expansions overseas will happen, what is more probable is investments into this country, into this industry, to harness the value and potential in the industry because this is a heavily under-benefited industry compared to every regional benchmark, Jayatilake said.
With the implementation of IFRS 17, the Sri Lanka life insurance sector can attract more foreign investment which will eventually help to double the size of the industry, said Lasitha Wimalaratne, Executive Director /CEO HNB Life. He said they have ample opportunities to expand within the country and outside recording 30 percent CAGR during the last five years.
“I think from even overseas investors’ perspective, it will have a lot of transparency and they know what they are doing and what they are investing in So we can attract more and more foreign investment into the industry, which will eventually help us to double the size of the industry and most of the multinational players will come with IFRS 17 implementation. So we are very positive about that,” he said.
Source: Daily News
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