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China Closes Representative Offices of Overseas Insurers
The China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) has ordered the cancellation of three overseas insurers' Beijing representative offices for violating the country 's insurance law and regulations.
The three companies are the U.S.-based Travelers Insurance Group Inc., the Ping An Insurance (USA) Company Ltd. and the Hong Kong-based Guijiang Insurance Agency Ltd., according to media reports Tuesday.
The reports quoted CIRC officials as saying that the three representative offices either changed their addresses without approval or failed to submit their annual reports and that of their companies, hence violating the CIRC's regulatory rules on representative offices of overseas insurance companies.
The officials noted that representative offices in China by overseas insurers have functioned a bridge for exchanges and communications between sino-overseas insurance sectors, but some of them have been ignoring Chinese regulators in their work and violated regulatory rules repeatedly.
They added that CIRC would further step up its supervision over representative offices in accordance with Chinese laws and regulations.
According to CIRC figures, by the end of 1999, 113 overseas insurance institutions from 17 countries and regions had opened nearly 200 representative offices in 14 Chinese cities.
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