Two domestic insurance companies, the Vietnam National Aviation Insurance JointStock Corporation (VNI) and Military Insurance Corporation (MIC), welcomed newcapital from foreign investors in the first quarter of 2023.
The PYN Elite Fund, an investment fund from Finland, has announced it has bought500,000 shares of MIC, raising its ownership rate from 4.99% to 5.29%.
After this transaction, the PYN Elite Fund officially became the second largestshareholder in the MIC, along with the parent company Military Commercial JointStock Bank (MBBank), which holds 68.4% of the MIC’s stake.
The PYN Elite Fund, formerly known as Mutual Fund Elite, was established inearly 1999 by PYN Fund Management (Finland). This is an investment fundtargeting Asian markets.
The MIC is currently among the top companies with a charter capital of 1.3trillion VND with nearly 2,000 employees. In a development strategy in the2020-25 period, the MIC set the ambition to be the Top 3 leading non-lifeinsurance companies in Vietnam by 2025.
Previously, in February 2023, DB Insurance officially became the parent companyof VNI with an ownership rate of 75% after signing a contract to receive sharetransfers from a group of shareholders, including 19 individual investors andone institutional investor in VNI.
DB Insurance has been present in the Vietnamese insurance market for more thanten years. In addition to VNI, this large group of the Republic of Korea hasalso invested in Post and Telecommunications Joint Stock Insurance Corporation(PTI) since 2015. It is currently a major shareholder of PTI with an ownershipof 37% of the capital.
One of DB Insurance’s strengths is motor vehicle insurance and the fact thatafter becoming a major shareholder of PTI, this shareholder has focused oninvesting in PTI’s retail segment of motor vehicle insurance, helping theinsurer continuously maintain the number one market share in the motor vehicleinsurance segment in Vietnam.
Meanwhile, VNI is also one of the Top 10 companies with the largest marketshare in Vietnam’s non-life insurance market in 2022, the Top 2 companies withthe highest revenue in compulsory auto civil liability insurance, and the Top 3companies with the highest revenue in motor vehicle insurance. Therefore, thestrategy to develop VNI shortly after DB Insurance becomes the controllingshareholder is a question of interest.
In addition to the above two cases, the market is also waiting for new moves inthe State Capital Investment Corporation (SCIC) disbursement roadmap in BaoMinh Insurance, whose personnel structure has changed a lot in recent years.
Experts said with new movements in the market, the competition in the motorvehicle insurance segment would become fiercer.
Non-life insurance still has a certain attraction to foreign capital flowsthough the profits of this segment mostly declined last year, and the market isnot as positive as before the pandemic. However, for investors interested inthe non-life insurance market in Vietnam, the potential remains huge because ofthe low insurance penetration./.