21 September 2020
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Singapore Life (Singlife), the nascent insurer which last week acquired a majority shareholding in Aviva's Singapore business, has said it wants to expand its business across South-East Asia.
At £1.7bn, the recently-announced merger is one of the biggest deals in the history of the insurance sector. The expanded business, which was only founded in 2014, will almost overnight become one of the biggest players in the Asian insurance sector.
As part of the deal, which is expected to be fully completed by January, Singlife will gain accecss to Aviva's 1.5 million clients and see its assets boosted by $587m.
Our ambition is to expand beyond just the boundaries of insurance into broader financial services and to do that not only in Singapore but across South-East Asia."
In an interview with Reuters, Walter de Oude, Singlife founder and CEO, said: "Our ambition is to expand beyond just the boundaries of insurance into broader financial services and to do that not only in Singapore but across South-East Asia."
"Our ambition is ultimately to list in Singapore. As a publicly-listed company of the future, that gives ownership of our firm to a much more broad-based community," de Oude said. However, he did not give a timeframe for the listing."
"We have hungry investors who are looking to expand the Singlife footprint as we grow in scale," he added.
Singlife also recently acquired a licence to operate in the Philippines.
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