Foreign Insurers Shifting Marketing Strategies

Foreign insurers are confident of the Chinese market despite of dropped market share.

It is slid foreign investment and export rooted from the global financial crisis that caused premium revenue foreign insurers gain in the nation's property insurance sector to fall, Greg Otterson, chief executive officer of Sun Alliance Insurance (China) Ltd., said in an interview on October 21. Statistics from the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, the top Chinese insurance industry regulator, shows that the market share foreign insurers captured in the sector in the first eight months of this year stood at 1.05 percent, down 0.15 percentage points from 1.2 percent in 2008.

Foreign property insurers depend on projects foreign companies launched in China much and hurt by the global financial crisis, the latter slow down investment, especially in real estate, in the country. In order to change the situation, those insurers have begun shifting their marketing strategies locally.