MAA becomes part of Zurich Group

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KOTA KINABALU: The Malaysian Assurance Alliance Berhad (MAA) has become part of the Zurich Group.

With the acquisition, it will focus on providing better clients and agents services, expanding sales and introducing more new products.

It also plans to increase its penetration into the Malaysia market, said MAA chief executive officer, Chee Cheong during a meeting with members of the press here yesterday.

“I believe the (Malaysian) market is still lowly penetrated. The country has been experiencing good economic growth and the people will have insurance needs. We are looking forward to harness the life and general insurance market and to achieve sustainable growth,” he said.

Prior to the acquisition on October 1, 2011, MAA has over 2.8 million policies in force.

“With the acquisition, we will continue to maintain the benefit of policy holders.”

He added, they will also study their competitors and work at how MAA could differentiate from others in the field.

Additionally, MAA also hope to forge partnership with banks, which was not embarked upon prior to the acquisition in order

to help the company in terms of distribution, said Chee.

MAA will also improve on the training of its agencies and improve its client services.

“We want to grow the business, profitably and sustainably. We want our agents to become more productive, generating more sales and we want to improve the efficiency of the operations side,” he said.

He added that customers can expect to see more new products and choices being introduced by MAA following the acquisition.

“We are looking forward to bringing international investment funds in our investment linked plans. We are also going to add protection riders to the range as well as more accident and health plans,” he said.

On his visit here, Chee said that he wanted to meet up with agents and leaders of the insurance firm.

“They are an important part of the organisation. They are the ones bridging the company to the customers,” he said.

There are 4500 MAA agents in Malaysia, 682 of whom are in Sabah.