For the second year in a row, the Philippine Insurers and Reinsurers Association (PIRA) is participating in the Financial Education Expo of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) which opened today at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City. PIRA has been tapped by the BSP as one of its partners in promoting financial literacy – particularly insurance literacy – among Filipinos. As a partner, PIRA has a booth at the FinEd Expo where participants can obtain materials in promoting insurance to their constituency. PIRA General Manager Roger Concepcion said it is an honor for the association to partner with the BSP. “We believe in the importance of financial literacy and we in PIRA are doing our part in promoting it through our various advocacies,” he said. The two-day FinEd Expo offers various financial education activities. It aims to instill awareness about the availability and accessibility of financial education programs to all Filipinos, increase personal financial consciousness on the values and benefits of being financially empowered, and orient the public about available financial tools that can help in the promotion of their financial well-being. The expo is a project handled by the BSP’s Financial Consumer Protection Department (FCPD) with the working sector, students and members of the academe as its target participants.

NAYPYITAW, Myanmar -- Top leaders of the Philippine Insurers and Reinsurers Association (PIRA) are now at the Horizon Lakeview Hotel here for the 45th meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Insurance Council (AIC). PIRA Chairman Allan Santos, Executive Director Michael Rellosa and Trustee Eden Tesoro are now attending meetings on AIC’s various committees. They are joined by Jene Aliwalas and Francis Papa, the former and present Executive Director of the Institute for Asia and the Pacific (IIAP), respectively. Chairman Santos is chairing the meeting of the AIC Reinsurance Committee while Mr. Rellosa is presiding over the AIC Education Committee which Mr. Aliwalas and Mr. Papa are attending. Ms. Tesoro, meanwhile, is attending the AIC’s Council of Bureaux. The meetings will last until Thursday, November 28, before the delegates go on a city tour on Friday. Taking part in the meetings are representatives from both the non-life or general insurance sector and the life insurance sector from 10 countries in Southeast Asia, namely Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Representing the life insurance companies in the Philippines is the Philippine Life Insurance Association (PLIA). Also being held here is the gathering of the ASEAN Insurance Regulators from the 10 ASEAN member countries. Insurance Commissioner Dennis Funa and Deputy Commissioner Erickson Balmes are representing the Philippines. The meetings are meant to discuss challenges as well as opportunities in the insurance industry in the region. Among the hot topics that will be discussed is reinsurance pooling, reinsurance education, harmonization of standards in training insurance professionals, cross-border motorcar insurance, insurance for natural disasters, among others.

To assess the impact of what is billed as the “biggest shake-up in insurance reporting” for decades, the Philippine Insurers and Reinsurers Association (PIRA) has partnered with PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the Insurance Commission for a study on the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 17. At a kickoff event at the Asian Institute of Management recently, PIRA Chairman Mr. Allan R. Santos called on all PIRA members to support the impact assessment study aimed at identifying ways to help non-life insurance companies transition to IFRS17. The IFRS17 is a new standard released by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) in 2017 and will be effective January 1, 2021 with prior year comparative reporting required. It requires measuring insurance contract liabilities based on certain “building blocks” such as discounted, probability-weighted estimates of cash flows, risk adjustment to address the uncertainty of cash flow estimates, and contractual service margin which is the unearned profit of the contract. PwC Senior Partner Ms. Imelda Dela Vega Mangundaya told PIRA members during the kickoff that the industry will have to revisit their rules and how they handle their books. “The Insurance Commission itself may have to revisit its rules under insurance industry ranking and the Amended Risk-Based Capital Framework,” she said. “For industry ranking, the income statement will no longer reflect gross premiums written but will be replaced by insurance service results, representing earned income. For capital requirement, the one-time equity effect of transition adjustment may trigger capital build-up plan or capital call from shareholders to comply with RBC2. Clarified guidance by the IC may be essential in this changing insurance landscape,” she explained.

They are tasked to manage the dangerous streets of Metro Manila. Yet despite the risks they face in their everyday work, the traffic enforcers of the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) do not have insurance to protect them from accidents. Not anymore. On October 15, 2019, the Philippine Insurers and Reinsurers Association (PIRA) in partnership with the Insurance Commission (IC) and the Philippine Insurers Club (PIC) signed a memorandum of agreement with the MMDA to provide 2,300 traffic enforcers with free personal accident insurance. PIRA Chairman Allan Santos said the signing of the agreement is a fitting highlight for this year’s Insurance Consciousness Week (ICW) as it reminds insurers and the general public of the reason why insurance exists. “This brings us back to the why of insurance – why are we here in the first place? We are here because there is a need to protect people from the risks they face in their daily work. In this case, there is a need to protect MMDA enforcers from road accidents,” he said. The idea of providing free personal accident insurance to MMDA enforcers came from PIRA Executive Director Michael Rellosa. PIRA has been working with the MMDA to assist in conducting earthquake drills in the metropolis when Rellosa found out that MMDA enforcers do not have any form of insurance. “It was a light-bulb moment for me. I suddenly realized that this could be an ideal project for the PIC  and PIRA for the ICW,” he said. Under the agreement, the industry through PIRA will be paying for the premium for the group insurance policy that will be issued to the MMDA by Fortune General Insurance. Each MMDA enforcer enrolled in the policy will be insured for P10,000 in case of accidental death or disablement; P5,000 for unprovoked assault or murder; P10,000 as additional coverage for motorcycle accidents; P1,000 as medical reimbursement for accident; and P1,000 as burial benefit for death due to accident. Each MMDA enforcer will be given an insurance card as proof of being covered. It will have a validity of one year. MMDA Chairman Danny Lim said this will mean a lot to enforcers and will serve as an additional non-monetary incentive to them. “We are grateful to PIRA for this initiative. This is a very timely project as we are also pushing for the law that would grant hazard pay to our enforcers,” he said. Insurance Commissioner Dennis Funa congratulated PIRA and the PIC for this initiative and committed his agency’s support to the industry, particularly in its quest to improve its customer service through technology. PIC President Joey Reyes, meanwhile, expressed his gratitude to PIRA for its support to the ICW which PIC organizes every year.

COTABATO, Philippines — On 16 October 2019 at 7:37 PM (local time), a magnitude 6.3 earthquake rocked the province of Cotabato and its vicinity. According to PHIVOLCS, the epicenter was located 23 km southeast of the municipality of Tulunan in North Cotabato with a 9 kilometer depth of focus. Minutes after the quake, a fire incident occurred at Gaisano Mall in General Santos City. According to the latest situational report released by NDRRMC, a total of 870 aftershocks with 7 casualties and 7,089 damaged infrastructures were documented after the said event. The agency has not yet released any damage cost estimate as of this writing. Click here for the full report.

The Philippine Insurers and Reinsurers Association (PIRA) has partnered with the Earth Security Group (ESG) in a pioneering effort to develop so-called ecosystem-based adaptation in the country. A report launched recently by the (ESG) documented a series of platforms it has developed over the past two years in collaboration with local action partners, to enable the private sector to play a greater role in scaling ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA). ESG’s new report entitled "Private Sector Collaboration for Climate Resilience: Catalysing Partnerships for Ecosystem-based Adaptation in the Philippines" highlights three platforms developed as part of Earth Security Group’s Action Lab programme. In the insurance platform, the ESG has begun working with PIRA to embed EbA in the Philippines’ insurance sector. An Insurance Task Force for EbA’ bringing together leading insurance and reinsurance companies and government decision-makers in the Philippines will develop new pathways to integrate the protection value of natural ecosystems into the definition of risk models and new product portfolios based on EbA. PIRA Executive Director Michael F. Rellosa said "Integrating ecosystem-based adaption in the insurance industry is a way to enhance the sector’s positive impact while expanding the portfolio of products in the market." "The Earth Security Group’s project has been instrumental in creating this awareness, which in our sector is very low, and bring together players that can contribute to innovative solutions," he said. The second platform features the ESG working with the Philippines Business for Environment (PBE) is identifying the collaboration mechanisms that can enable companies, investment funds, civil society and government agencies to work together to align their resources on opportunities to scale results-based Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes in line with the government’s natural conservation management priorities. The third platform, meanwhile, involves the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) establishing a Climate Resilience Lab to incubate EbA projects generated by MBA students and implemented with local governments. In addition, the AIM-ESG partnership actively works together with 10 to 15 local government executives in municipalities that are most exposed to the risks of climate change, with a bespoke executive programme that forges private-public partnerships for EbA with participating companies to build the resilience of cities and local populations through infrastructure and value chain investments that support ecosystem regeneration. Over the next two years, Earth Security Group and its action partners will continue developing these partnership programmes. The project is funded by the International Climate Initiative (IKI) of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. The Earth Security Group's press release on this can be accessed through this link.

September 12, 2019| Makati Diamond Residences The Philippine Insurtech Conference, as the Philippine Insurers and Reinsurers Association's (PIRA) 8th Stakeholders convention, will gather the non-life insurance industry's top executives to discuss present and future trends that are disrupting or about to disrupt the way they do business.   We have assembled a lineup of speakers who are authorities and thought leaders in the world of insure tech. We expect them to provide cutting-edge insights on how Philippine-based companies could leverage on insure tech and grow their business. EVENT VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS

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