The Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce (FCCC) organized a lunch-meeting with Mr Bart De Smet, CEO Ageas, Vice-Chairman of the Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce and nominated Manager of the Year 2016 by Trends. The luncheon took place on 28 September at ‘De Warande’ in Brussels.

Mr Bart De Smet delivered a keynote speech on: “Ageas in China: History and Experiences”.

The outlook for the insurance sector remains excellent. The insurance industry in China is forecast to grow at twice the rate of the economy as a whole until 2020. Gary Crist, Ageas CEO Asia, attended the lunch as well and was available to answer questions.

Mr De Smet mentioned that China is one of the fastest growing and highly attractive markets for life insurance with a premium growth in 2016 of about 25%. China is the third insurance market after the U.S. and Japan. China is responsible for 2.4% of the global life premium growth of 2.5%.

Since 2001, Ageas has a minority shareholding in China Taiping Life Insurance, which has 16 million active customers and a staff of over 27,000. Ageas’s added value is providing support in key domains of insurance management, explained Bart De Smet. He also emphasized that China is one of the world’s largest investors and adopters of digital technologies, led by three aggressive, giant internet companies with global reach: Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (BAT).