NEWS
Beijing office switch means closer ties to China for Mapfre Re
Mapfre Re is committed to being a long-term player in the China market.
Mapfre Re’s decision to convert its representative office in Beijing into a branch reflects its commitment to being a long-term player in the market and its plans for line development and greater diversification, Javier San Basilio, deputy general manager and chief underwriting officer for the reinsurer told SIRC Today.
“We’ve been aiming to do this for quite some time,” said San Basilio. “We decided a few years ago that this is the route we wanted to go down to show commitment to the market and to have a better infrastructure in place.”
The opening of the branch office will help ensure that Mapfre Re is seen more as a local participant in the Chinese market.
“The way we write business won’t change massively, but we will have closer contact to clients and it will bring opportunities for us to have a more diversified portfolio,” he said.
The new branch is currently pending regulatory approval. The process began in August 2022 and must be completed by August 2023.
The Spain-headquartered reinsurer’s presence in China is not a recent development. It has been doing business in the country since the 1980s, so by the time San Basilio was posted in Manila from 1996 to 1999, the company’s business in the Chinese market was already well established. The foundation of a branch in Beijing simply cements Mapfre Re’s long-running commitment to doing business in the country.
“We want them to be a sizable chunk of our portfolio.”
Javier San Basilio, Mapfre Re
Its China operation is focused on property and casualty, with the greatest emphasis placed on property, and the addition of agricultural lines.
“We want to develop those lines, develop more excess of loss business, and write some life business,” San Basilio said. “We have a life unit based in Singapore that services the region with the close cooperation of our headquarters’ centralised team for life, and this is an area of business in which we want to grow in the region and in China in particular.”
Asia-Pacific has for some time been the fastest-growing region in the Mapfre Re book and the firm is committed to continuing on the same trajectory.
“Our strategic goal for China and the rest of the Asia-Pacific region is to keep growing, probably not at the same pace as in the past 10 years, but we will keep growing because the regional markets will grow and we will follow that,” he said.
“We want them to be a sizable chunk of our portfolio—which they already are—and a sizable chunk of our profits.”
Mapfre Re is particularly well established in some parts of Asia—for example, through its long-standing presence in Manila—and is focused on growing its presence and visibility significantly in others.
“We have to be realistic and play with the rules of the market.”
Its business in Southeast Asia has been growing in the past few years—the focus is very much on sustainable growth, while India is an area where the reinsurer previously had less of a footing but is now building a more active presence—as always, with a focus on profitability and long-term relationships.
Long-term relationships have always been a hallmark of Mapfre Re’s approach and there are no plans to change this, San Basilio said.
“If a particular market is not very long-term oriented, we have to be realistic and play with the rules of the market, but our preferred way of acting by far is long-term relationships,” he said.
“That doesn’t mean saying yes to everyone and everything—we have to be selective, we have to be professional, we have to be profitable. But we want to establish long-term partnerships—we’ve done it in the region for many years.
“In Mapfre Re that is in our blood, not only for Asia-Pacific, and I don’t see us changing it. We want to build long-standing relationships and partnerships,” he concluded.
Main image: Shutterstock / HelloRF Zcool
