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ingapore-based Great Eastern Holdings expects to market more affordable life insurance products to tap into a growing middle class in Indonesia, one of its key markets in Southeast Asia.

Great Eastern Holdings Group CEO Christopher Wei said in Jakarta on Friday that his firm would introduce affordable life insurance products in the country to shift its focus from the upper-class market dominated by investment-linked products.

“We feel that there’s a very significant opportunity to offer simple products, important to the emerging middle class in Indonesia,” he said, adding that it would be part of its plans to expand its protection products in the country.

Wei said Great Eastern was preparing, among other things, micro takaful (sharia compliant) products and would launch them soon.

“Given the demographic composition of Indonesia, more than 90 percent of the population is Muslim. Sharia products have to be a priority for us,” he said.

The company states that investment-linked insurance products were the largest contributors to revenues at around 80 percent, while the remaining 20 percent were from traditional insurance products.

“With a rising savings rate and increased average income, the insurance industry in Indonesia is very exciting and we have to take advantage of all those trends,” Wei said, adding that his firm would actively seek strategy and business models to achieve targets, including by adding agencies.

Great Eastern Life is the oldest life insurance group in Malaysia and Singapore with S$55 billion in assets.

It has a total of 3.8 million policyholders in several countries, including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam. In Indonesia alone, it has 60,000 individual policyholders and 50,000 group policyholders.

Its local subsidiary, PT Great Eastern Life Indonesia (GELIndo), established in 1996, operates in several major cities, including Batam, Medan, Jakarta, Bandung and Surabaya.

During the first quarter of this year, GELIndo posted Rp 194 billion (US$22.7 million) in total new business-weighted premiums, a 78 percent increase from Rp 108.98 billion in the same period last year.

GELIndo’s new business-weighted premiums jumped 583 percent to Rp 595 billion in 2010 from Rp 102.1 billion a year earlier. Its assets reached Rp 1.29 trillion in the first quarter of this year, while its risk-based capital reached 450.73 percent.