Lender MSB expects to earn hundreds of millions from insurance deal

By Quynh Trang December 16, 2020 | 09:42 pm PT

Employees count banknotes at a MSB branch. Photo courtesy of MSB.

Vietnam Maritime Commercial Joint Stock Bank is set to sign an exclusive bancassurance deal with a leading but unidentified insurer worth hundreds of millions of dollars to it.

It will be signed next year for 15 years with one of the three biggest insurers in terms of market share in Vietnam, Nguyen Hoang Linh, CEO of the lender (MSB), said at a meeting on Wednesday.

The country’s three biggest are Canada’s Manulife, the U.K.’s company Prudential and Japan’s Dai-ichi Life.

Linh cited the example of Asia Commercial Bank (ACB) to indicate roughly how much MSB would receive in upfront payment for the deal.

ACB received $370 million from Canada’s Sun Life.

Linh said ACB has a monthly premium income of VND80 billion ($3.45 million), while that figure of MSB is VND50 billion.

The Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange this month gave approval for MSB to list its shares on December 23 at a price of VND15,000, which will put its market cap at VND17.6 trillion.

The bank has forecast pre-tax profit of VND2.3-2.4 trillion this year, up 4.5 percent from last year.