Insurance market lights up after Tet Holiday

The "lucky money" handed out during the Lunar New Year gave a boost to the insurance market

Eyeing the sudden rise in the insurance segment, plenty of insurers immediately kick-started customer loyalty as well as appealing discount programmes to stimulate demand.

Quang Hung, an insurance consultant at Generali, said that on the sixth day of the Lunar New Year, he sold a life insurance policy to a 49-year-old female client who was the breadwinner of her family, stating her intention of purchasing the life insurance package was to safeguard her family’s health, not to invest.

In recent years, the demand for insurance purchases among middle-aged clients for their children saw rapid growth, especially after the Tet Holiday. These clients usually purchased life insurance for their children.

Hung further added that the most common insurance products that caught the eye of clients were savings accounts worth around VND10 million ($440) opened at banks and annual insurance products worth around VND6 million ($264).

Likewise, insurance packages priced at around VND6 million ($264) per year attached to a critical illness insurance cover which could last until the policy-holder turns 75 years old were mostly endorsed by better-off families.

A general director of a Ho Chi Minh City-headquartered insurance firm listed some of the reasons behind the upturn in the demand for insurance purchasing after the Tet holiday.

Accordingly, the excessive amounts of “lucky money” gained from the holiday and the rising awareness among middle-aged clients about the importance of insurance coverage in their daily lives were the main drivers.

Beside the insurance sector, other markets also shone in the weeks after the Tet Holiday, for instance the gold trading market on Caishen Day (the tenth day of the lunar year when, according to popular belief, great fortune would be granted to those who buy gold on that day).