Allianz sees success as it grows Asia footprint, says Asia-Pacific CEO, Mark Mitchell

Four or five years ago Allianz’s footprint in Asia was “pretty limited”, Asia-Pacific CEO Mark Mitchell told SIRC Today, saying it started out with branches in Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Now the firm has expanded, with branches in South Korea and more recently India. He said the company has moved Allianz Global Corporate and Specialty (AGCS) people into other Allianz business to capitalise on some of the growth occurring in the region, in China and Indonesia, and the firm is currently looking at Thailand.

“We have expanded our footprint and part of that is to align with our distribution partners, which for us is primarily global brokers.

“It is also to follow our global multinational clients into those territories where they themselves are expanding, so we can focus on local needs,” Mitchell explained.

The company is “taking a pause” on new products at the moment because over the last four or five years it has expanded a lot in terms of its product range. For example, the insurer entered the crisis management space with terrorism and product recall.

“Both of those lines have been very successful, particularly the recall product in northern Asia, where you have a lot of auto manufacturing, so a high demand for product recall,” he said.

Environmental impairment liability has also been an area of growth for the business.
“It’s driven by local regulation or government legislation in places such as South Korea; it’s for the dirty industries, heavy polluters,” he said.

The South Korean government has made it compulsory for these types of businesses to buy environmental impairment liability insurance from a local pool. AGCS leads the reinsurance placement on that pool, which has been “a bit of a windfall” for the insurer, Mitchell said.

More recently alternative risk transfer, a capability that Allianz had globally, was brought to the region, and already there are enquiries and buying activity.

“It’s from clients who can’t buy cat cover in the traditional general insurance marketplace.

“They may want to access it in the alternative risk transfer market or the capital market and we can help facilitate purchasing using our alternative risk transfer division as an intermediary of sorts,” he explained.