The wait is over. Hong Kong’s 120,000 insurance agents look forward to mainland Chinese clients after enduring 3 years of Covid hardship

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Sales of insurance policies to mainland Chinese clients stood at HK$1 billion in the first nine months of 2022, a fraction of the record HK$72.68 billion clocked in 2016

Leading insurers Manulife, AIA and Prudential plan to hire a combined number of 10,000 new agents this year to tap business from returning mainland visitors

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Enoch Yiu

Published: 9:30am, 21 Jan 2023Updated: 10:30am, 21 Jan 2023

Yuey Wong Hau-wan, a Hong Kong-born sales agent for the Canadian insurer Manulife, has been busy on WeChat, connecting with her mainland Chinese clients in anticipation of their return to the city for the first time in three years.

With pandemic restrictions lifted and the border between Hong Kong and mainland China open once again, the city is bracing itself for the estimated 1 million visitors from the mainland who are poised to pour into Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan during the Lunar New Year holiday.

“I am ready to serve my mainland clients and friends,” Wong said. “I am looking forward to welcoming and seeing them in Hong Kong. I know many of them already have plans to come here for dining, shopping and buying insurance.”

Wong has good reason to be hopeful. When she joined Manulife in 2014, mainland Chinese customers spent HK$24.4 billion (US$3.1 billion) on insurance policies in Hong Kong, 21.4 per cent of the coverage sold in the city that year, according to data from the Insurance Authority. That spending jumped 30 per cent the next year to HK$31.6 billion in 2015, and more than doubled to a record HK$72.68 billion in 2016.

“The [imminent] return of mainland visitors should be the single most important growth driver for Hong Kong’s insurance industry,” said UBS Global Research’s China analyst Kelvin Chu. A UBS survey conducted between late September and early October showed that 60 per cent of the China respondents, who intend to buy Hong Kong insurance coverage, will make their trips within 12 months of the border reopening, he said.

Wong is one of the 120,000 insurance agents in Hong Kong whose sales are dependent on the open border with southern China, as the city’s regulations ban the online sales of life insurance policies to mainlanders, requiring customers to physically present themselves in the city to sign for their coverage.