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Annuity market grows as banks dip in

By Xu Shenglan (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-07-24 09:55

China's corporate annuity fund will experience robust growth during the coming years, and may reach 1 trillion yuan by 2010 and 8 trillion yuan by 2030, according to a government forecast.

China's corporate annuity scale was less than 100 billion yuan ($14.63 billion) before 2007, but it reached 150 billion yuan at the end of 2007 and is expected to reach 200 billion yuan at the end of this year, said Cheng Siwei, former Vice-Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, at China's Annuity Research High-level Forum.

This increase may be attributed to commercial banks, which are making more and more of a presence in the corporate annuity market. During the past two weeks, several domestic commercial banks have released five annuity management products, hoping to share a slice of the lucrative pie.

Earlier this month, Agricultural Bank of China teamed up with China Life, Ping An and Taikang Insurance to launch three annuity products, while Citibank released its first whole-life annuity product. China Merchants Bank launched a tour promotion Friday in Chengdu for its corporate annuity product Golden Life No 1, which targets small and medium enterprise clients.

"The annuity product will invest in currency and bond markets as well as equity funds. It will target long-term stable gains with lower risk," said an analyst with China Merchants Bank. "The Golden Life No 1 annuity plan will include a number of enterprises, which can help to diversify risk and cut management fees while enlarging the fund scale."

Corporate annuity, also known as pension, assures employees quality retirement and can help to build a long-lasting relationship between the employer and its employees. Such a plan will increase employee loyalty to serve the company in the future. As firms must endure part of the fees, most annuity applicants are those with better benefits. This hampers development for domestic annuity business to some extent.

But if a corporation is qualified to try the annuity project and is in good standing, banks can seize the chance to lend to this firm by providing annuity service, creating competition among the banks, an industry insider said.