Companies
WellPoint scouts for JV partner
By HU YUANYUAN (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-14 11:42
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BEIJING - WellPoint Inc, the US largest health benefits provider by membership volume, is scouting for a joint venture partner to set up a health insurance firm in China, the company's top executive said on Tuesday.
Angela Braly, WellPoint's president and CEO, came to China for discussions with potential partners and the industry regulator, but she declined to disclose their names.
"The joint-venture partner should have the same vision as us but need not necessarily be an insurance company," said Braly. "If everything moves on smoothly, we are targeting 2011 for offering health insurance services through the venture."
The company set up its Beijing representative office in 2007, and established a third-party administrator in Shanghai in 2008. Though the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) encourages insurers to have a stake in quality medical service providers to better prevent potential risks, WellPoint does not intend to go down that route, said John Domeika, president and CEO of WellPoint China.
As China's health reforms move forward, private health insurance is increasingly becoming an important complement to government insurance programs, thereby offering a huge market for foreign insurers.
DKV Deutsche Krankenversicherung AG, a German-based private health insurer, in 2004 took a 19.9 percent take in the country's first health insurer, the PICC Health Insurance Co.
"Compared with other players, we attach more attention to communications with patients and health service providers, thus offering them better access to quality services at a more affordable price," said Braly.
China's health insurance premiums totaled 10.95 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) in the first two months of this year, according to CIRC, the industry watchdog. The figure represented an increase of 34 percent over the same period last year.
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