Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) yesterday said that its insurance unit would weather rising COVID-19 insurance claims and no fundraising is needed.
Fubon Insurance Co (富邦產險) said it has sold about 2.31 million COVID-19 insurance policies and as of the middle of this month had paid NT$1.1 billion (US$37.09 million) of claims from 29,000 policyholders.
It pays a total of NT$50 million per day in claims, it said.
Photo: CNA
It is difficult to calculate how much more compensation it would have to pay, as local COVID-19 infections are still on the rise, with a peak not expected until next month, Fubon Insurance said.
Fubon Insurance reiterated that it would not avoid its responsibility to policyholders.
“Fubon Insurance has net value of NT$30 billion to NT$40 billion, and assets of NT$130 billion, not to mention the high net value of Fubon Financial,” Fubon Financial president Jerry Harn (韓蔚廷) told an investors’ conference amid speculation that the company would be unable to bear the burden.
Policyholders would receive compensation, Harn said.
The loss rate on COVID-19 insurance policies was about 15 percent, the company said.
Three factors would affect the figure, including the ultimate number of local infections, the government’s virus policy and clarification of disputes, it said.
If the financial pressure becomes too heavy, Fubon Insurance would consider applying to the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) to use part of its special reserve to write off losses, it said.
The insurer can allocate as much as NT$15.5 billion, it said.
Fubon Financial Holding reported an annual decline of 9.4 percent in net profit to NT$46.5 billion for the first quarter, mainly because of a drop of 7 percent in net profit at Fubon Life Insurance Co (富邦人壽) to NT$36.4 billion amid decreasing first-year premiums and lower returns on investments, corporate data showed.
Realized capital gains from fixed-income investments plunged about 75 percent year-on-year to NT$6.7 billion in the first quarter, the data showed.
In related news, China Life Insurance Co (中國人壽) yesterday announced that even though its insurance terms do not stipulate that it must compensate policyholders who catch COVID-19, but are not hospitalized due to the virus, it would pay those who stay home as much as it pays for hospitalizations, as long as they are prescribed drugs.
The drugs are not limited to oral antivirus drugs such as Paxlovid and molnupiravir, or a traditional Chinese compound called Taiwan Chingguan Yihau (清冠一號), or NRICM101, but policyholders should provide prescriptions, a doctor’s diagnosis and a digital COVID-19 certificate with their claims, China Life said.
The FSC has said that insurance firms can decide themselves — while adhering to the terms of their policies — whether to compensate people who catch COVID-19, but are not hospitalized.
RECYCLE: Taiwan would aid manufacturers in refining rare earths from discarded appliances, which would fit the nation’s circular economy goals, minister Kung said Taiwan would work with the US and Japan on a proposed cooperation initiative in response to Beijing’s newly announced rare earth export curbs, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. China last week announced new restrictions requiring companies to obtain export licenses if their products contain more than 0.1 percent of Chinese-origin rare earths by value. US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent on Wednesday responded by saying that Beijing was “unreliable” in its rare earths exports, adding that the US would “neither be commanded, nor controlled” by China, several media outlets reported. Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato yesterday also
Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), founder and CEO of US-based artificial intelligence chip designer Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Friday celebrated the first Nvidia Blackwell wafer produced on US soil. Huang visited TSMC’s advanced wafer fab in the US state of Arizona and joined the Taiwanese chipmaker’s executives to witness the efforts to “build the infrastructure that powers the world’s AI factories, right here in America,” Nvidia said in a statement. At the event, Huang joined Y.L. Wang (王英郎), vice president of operations at TSMC, in signing their names on the Blackwell wafer to
‘DRAMATIC AND POSITIVE’: AI growth would be better than it previously forecast and would stay robust even if the Chinese market became inaccessible for customers, it said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its full-year revenue growth outlook after posting record profit for last quarter, despite growing market concern about an artificial intelligence (AI) bubble. The company said it expects revenue to expand about 35 percent year-on-year, driven mainly by faster-than-expected demand for leading-edge chips for AI applications. The world’s biggest contract chipmaker in July projected that revenue this year would expand about 30 percent in US dollar terms. The company also slightly hiked its capital expenditure for this year to US$40 billion to US$42 billion, compared with US$38 billion to US$42 billion it set previously. “AI demand actually
RARE EARTHS: The call between the US Treasury Secretary and his Chinese counterpart came as Washington sought to rally G7 partners in response to China’s export controls China and the US on Saturday agreed to conduct another round of trade negotiations in the coming week, as the world’s two biggest economies seek to avoid another damaging tit-for-tat tariff battle. Beijing last week announced sweeping controls on the critical rare earths industry, prompting US President Donald Trump to threaten 100 percent tariffs on imports from China in retaliation. Trump had also threatened to cancel his expected meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in South Korea later this month on the sidelines of the APEC summit. In the latest indication of efforts to resolve their dispute, Chinese state media reported that
RSS