China Pacific Insurance Company, the country's first nationwide shareholding insurance company, is working towards being listed on the stock exchange this year in order to gain access to the capital market.

The company, with life and other insurance businesses, will strive to introduce a joint-venture system to all its life insurance businesses while making an initial public offering to the others, said Wang Guoliang, general manager of the company.

China Pacific has already set up a life insurance joint venture with the US-based Aetna Group in Shanghai to sell personal life insurance products.

The industry watchdog, China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC), has decided to further separate life insurance from other kinds of insurance in the new year.

China Pacific, Ping An Insurance Company of China and Xinjiang Corps Insurance Company, which are involved in both types of insurance, have become the three targeted companies.

"The CIRC has created separation plans for the three companies and submitted the plans to the State Council for approval," said CIRC Chairman Ma Yongwei at a recent national conference.

According to a senior official with China Pacific, the company will strive to set up joint ventures in all its life insurance branches nationwide.

But the plan is still waiting for approval, the official said.

Insiders say quite a number of foreign insurers are vying for the opportunity to work with China Pacific.

The company is working on being listed on the local securities market to get direct access to the capital market.

Although the State Council has approved insurance companies access to the securities market by investing in security

funds, the investment channel is still not diversified enough to solve the solvency margin problem of life insurance companies.

China Pacific has bought into some insurance funds after the State Council approved it, but a senior official said the returns have not been as good as expected.

Some other companies like the People's Insurance Company of China (PICC) did not even buy the funds because they do not consider them to be very rewarding compared with other forms of investment, said a PICC official.

Besides China Pacific, there are still some companies planning to be listed at home and abroad.

In the past year, China Pacific has reaped in a premium income of 12.499 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion), of which 5.87 billion yuan came from other insurance businesses, and 6.629 billion yuan from life insurance business.

Total profits amounted to 416 million yuan (US$50 million) last year, a 30 per cent increase over the previous year, said General Manager Wang Guoliang.

So far, the company has set up 480 branches nationwide, and representative offices overseas.

This year, the company will still put profitability at the top of its list of goals and increase the upgrading of internal operations and management systems, said Wang. (China Daily)