The China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) yesterday ordered all insurance companies to stop selling controversial health policies that pay returns based on their profits.

The decision ends months of rumours about the future of the "with-profits" health policies, which have enjoyed spectacular growth in the last two years.

The commission has banned sales of such policies after October 1, it said in a statement. But it stressed that other with-profits policies, including permanent life products and annuities, are not affected.

"The vast majority of with-profits life insurance products in the market at present are still allowed to be sold, but with-profits health policies will exit the market, and be replaced by without-profits health policies," the statement said.

Chinese life insurers started to sell with-profits health policies only a few years ago, promising policyholders an unfixed dividend-like return from the insurers' profits.

The business grew rapidly as the Chinese people embraced the concept. Sales of with-profits health policies accounted for about half of the overall premium income for domestic life insurers last year, which totalled 112.2 billion yuan (US$13.5 billion), official statistics indicated.

But as a chronically bearish stock market continued to drive down returns on insurance funds, many insurers failed last year to pay as many dividends as policyholders expected. Rumours started at the end of last year that the product would be banned.

Tuo Guozhu, a professor with the Beijing-based Capital University of Economics and Business, said many insurance agents had exaggerated the promise of returns in their promotions, leading many policyholders to expect more than the insurers could deliver.

"People were saying they were cheated, and many went to court," Tuo said. "There were quite a number of contract disputes."

In the statement yesterday, the CIRC said the product complicated risk management efforts at insurance companies. The primary function of health insurance was risk coverage, not investment returns, it said.

But Tuo said the product itself was not to blame as insurers were only raising funds they needed by meeting changing needs. The lesson was they should not mislead consumers.

"It's not product innovation's fault," he said.

(China Daily 06/20/2003 page6)

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