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 | Saturday, April 22, 2000, updated at 12:04(GMT+8) | ||||||||||||
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China's Life Insurance Sector Preparing for WTO EntryChina will encourage its insurers to offer more dividend-paying insurance options as part of the effort to prepare the life insurance sector for the country 's anticipated entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO).Wu Xiaoping, Vice-Chairman of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, said that China's life insurance sector is expecting fierce competition from overseas insurance companies after the country enters the WTO. The most pressing task facing the domestic life insurance sector now is to sharpen its international competitiveness by improving management and providing better service, Wu said at the ongoing International Forum on the Management and Development of China's Life Insurance here in Shanghai. China's insurance sector has maintained an annual average growth rate of nearly 40 percent since the country resumed insurance business in the early 1980s. Last year the sector reported a premium income of 139.3 billion yuan (about 17 billion U.S. dollars), 62.6 percent of which came from life insurance. However, Wu said, the Chinese insurance market has witnessed a slow-down in growth since last year. "The insurance sector is at the critical stage of a shift from those traditional insurance products which are somewhat similar to saving deposits, " Wu said, stressing that the shift requires a change in business concept and an overall improvement in management. According to Wu, insurance products that enable policy-holders to share insurers' profits by offering dividends are now dominating the insurance market in some developed countries like the United States.
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