Philam Plans posts 37.5% sales growth to P3.3B in 9 months

Philam Plans Inc. posted a 37.5-percent sales growth in the first nine months of 2007 to P3.3 billion from P2.4 billion in the same period a year ago.

Philam Plans, a subsidiary of the Philippine American Life and General Insurance Co. Inc. (Philamlife), remains the top pre-need company in the country with a market share of close to 20 percent among the over 30 pre-need companies licensed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Of the company’s total sales, 80 percent were pension products, 15-percent education plans and five-percent memorial products.

SEC data showed that the country’s pre-need industry has been slowly recovering from a slump as sales in the nine-month period grew by roughly seven percent, a turnaround from the 7.08-percent drop in sales the previous year, thus halting three consecutive years on the downtrend.

Philam Plans president and chief executive officer Jack Howell said the robust growth in the first nine months was largely due to the sale of new products introduced since last year.

“The uptake by the market of the new products were quick, as clients gobbled them up,” Howell said during the press launch yesterday of five more new pre-need products.

He said the company expects total sales for the whole of 2007 to breach the P4-billion mark.

The company’s policies-in-force currently stand at a little over 300,000.

Howell said Philam Plans has already issued payments for matured pension and education plans worth P707 million this year. For the whole of 2006, it paid out P553 million for matured product lines.