'Malaysia a growth engine for Great Eastern'

Christopher Brian Wei, group chief executive officer at Great Eastern Holdings Ltd, said he plans to focus on the “untapped” middle-class population in Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia, where the company has existing operations.

He spoke at a press briefing yesterday.

Great Eastern, the biggest life insurer in Singapore, is 85 per cent-owned by Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp, the nation’s second-largest lender by market capitalization, according on data compiled by Bloomberg.

“The whole industry is targeting the same sector, which is the wealthy upper-middle-class that they are selling investment- linked products to. So we are going to focus on the middle-class that is largely being ignored by the market. We’re looking at a differentiated approach to the market place.”

On his chosen markets:

“Malaysia is going to be a very exciting engine of growth for us. Indonesia should offer very attractive growth. Vietnam has been a wonderful success story. We’re only a year and a half in and we’re deploying the same discipline that we do in our mature markets.” -- Bloomberg