Richard Li’s FWD to buy stake in Indonesian life insurer for about US$300 million
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FWD Group has agreed to buy a minority stake in the life insurance arm of PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI), taking another step towards building a pan-regional insurance company.
The Hong Kong-based life insurance company said on Monday that it would buy a stake in Indonesia’s PT Asuransi BRI Life, finally securing a company it has been chasing for years by winning a fiercely contested auction.
FWD, which is backed by Hong Kong-based entrepreneur Richard Li Tzar-kai, Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing’s younger son, bid about US$300 million for a 30 per cent stake in the business, according to a person familiar with the matter. The deal values the Indonesian life insurer at about US$1 billion, the person added. An FWD spokeswoman declined to comment on the valuation.
Since its foundation in 2013, FWD has been weaving together an insurance platform across Southeast Asia’s underserved and fast-growing markets. A significant presence in Indonesia, the region’s largest market by GDP and the world’s fourth most populous country, has long been a treasured prize.
“We are now in all the major markets that we aimed to build in,” Huynh Thanh Phong, FWD’s chief executive, told the South China Morning Post. FWD now spans Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, Japan and Malaysia. “The BRI Life acquisition fits exactly into the same approach and strategy that we’ve adopted over the years,” he said.
