Tag: Singtel

Singtel and Great Eastern today announced their partnership to launch a range of general insurance products spanning home, motor and travel, jointly developed by both companies. These innovative insurance offerings, underwritten by Great Eastern, seek to address customer needs arising from their increasingly digital lifestyles, featuring telco-centric benefits that are industry firsts. This collaboration expands Singtel’s foray into insurance, tapping its wide customer base to reach more than 60% of all households in Singapore, and valuable customer insights that help tailor insurance products to customers’ lifestyle needs.

To start, Singtel and Great Eastern will be introducing Singtel Home Protect, a home insurance first that provides coverage for both telco bills and home contents. The plan reimburses Singtel broadband expenses besides covering renovation, furniture, appliances, valuables and personal effects, which most home owners do not insure today. Insurance that bundles both home contents and broadband is synergistic, as home owners typically sign up for or re-contract their broadband services when they shift or renovate their homes.

Mr Yuen Kuan Moon, CEO of Consumer Singapore at Singtel said, “With the shift to work from home since the onset of COVID-19, many people have made home improvements to create a more conducive environment. This makes protecting their homes with Singtel Home Protect more important than ever. On top of better coverage for home belongings, we want to give our customers additional peace of mind by providing extra protection for their telco bills. We’ve worked closely with Great Eastern to enhance traditional insurance with the kind of telco benefits that speak to our reliance on technology and this will also be extended to motor and travel insurance.”

In the coming weeks, Singtel and Great Eastern will also be offering car owners motor insurance. For travellers keen to tour the world once more travel restrictions lift, Singtel will be introducing travel insurance with mobile-related benefits. This is another first in Singapore as it includes unique benefits such as reimbursement of Singtel mobile bill during hospitalization due to an accident, and of additional Singtel mobile data expenses incurred due to delays in travel, as well as repair or replacement of mobile phone in case of loss.

Mr Ryan Cheong, Managing Director of Digital for Business, Great Eastern, said, “The partnership with a trusted telco like Singtel is yet another milestone in our digital affinity strategy and expansion into new customer segments as a leading regional insurer. To provide value-added protection to augment Singtel’s existing customer offer, we leveraged data insights to develop affordable, relevant general insurance solutions with unique benefits to help protect their everyday needs. Through continuous engagement and a seamless consumer purchase journey, we are making customized protection solutions easily accessible to Singtel customers to LifeProof their assets through home, and later motor and travel insurance.”

Singtel Home Protect is offered to Singtel broadband customers at launch and will be made available to all Singtel customers later. For as low as S$6.50 a month, they can sign up for the plan on the Singtel website or through My Singtel app. The plan covers reimbursement of Singtel bills of S$280 per month for up to three months, and up to S$80,000 for home contents and renovation in the event of a disruption to services due to a fire or other types of damage to the home. Available for S$84 for 12 months of coverage, or S$156 for 24 months of coverage, customers can enjoy 10% off Home Protect from now until 18 September 2020. For more details, visit singtel.com/homeprotect.

The launch of these general insurance products adds to Singtel’s expanding range of insurance offerings for its customers. Singtel first made its foray into the local insurance market last July, when it launched free personal insurance cover for its prepaid customers as part of mobile data plans. Earlier in the year, Singtel extended free 30-day COVID-19 insurance coverage to prepaid and Dash customers. Singtel also introduced an insurance savings plan for Dash customers who wish to start saving regularly for the future.

A greater percentage of respondents expressed willingness to park money with Singtel compared to Grab, a survey conducted by CGS-CIMB finds. In a recent survey conducted by local brokerage CGS-CIMB, participants were given a scenario whereby they were offered a slight premium (another 30 basis points) to market rates at new digital banks. In this case, 45 percent of the respondents were willing to place fixed deposits with Singtel compared to just 33 percent for Grab. Only two choices were provided to survey respondents.

We noted a clear difference in the trust levels accorded to Singtel and Grab, based on their willingness to use these entities as a depository institution given an identical set of circumstances, said CGS-CIMB analyst Andrea Choong in the report.

Singtel and Grab, which operate digital wallets Singtel Dash and Grab Pay respectively, have expressed interests in applying for Singapore’s digital banking licenses. This prompted the local broker to do a survey of preferences.  The brokerage surveyed 139 respondents from various industries, with a larger proportion of them from the finance industry. Those aged between 30 and 50 years made up three-quarters of the sample pool.

Testing for depositors’ sensitivities to interest rates with an additional 50 basis premium over the rates offered by the digital banks above, 55 percent of those who were previously unwilling to place fixed deposits with Singtel would now in this case, compared to just 40 percent for Grab, the brokerage said.

CGS-CIMB estimates that 4 to 11 percent of deposits from the domestic banking unit is at risk of being taken by the upcoming new digital banks in Singapore. However, the brokerage acknowledged that this simulation does not take into account «retaliatory measures» by incumbent banks and the effects of further Fed rate cuts.

The brokerage surveyed 139 respondents from various industries, with a larger proportion of them from the finance industry. Those aged between 30 and 50 years made up 75 percent of the sample pool.

The fight for deposits is essential for digital banks, as they need cheap retail deposits to move towards profitability. The Monetary Authority of Singapore, in setting out the guidelines for digital banks here, had made it clear that digital bank applicants cannot engage in predatory pricing behavior, and must show a path towards profitability in their five-year financial projections.

Currently, DBS, OCBC and UOB’s Singdollar deposits account for 24 percent, 17 percent and 20 percent of total deposits in the domestic banking unit – the unit that mainly accounts for Singdollar deposits.

Singtel Group has reported a 44% slump in net profit for the financial year ending in March, partly as a result of lower contributions from the group’s regional mobile associates.

Net profit declined to S$3.10 billion ($2.26 billion), despite revenue remaining stable at S$17.37 billion, and growing 4% in constant currency terms.

But the bottom line was impacted by an exceptional gain last year arising from the divestment of a 75% stake in NetLink Trust – the company established by Singtel to deploy Singapore’s national broadband network.

Losses at Indian mobile associate Airtel, a lower contribution from Indonesia’s Telkomsel, and the erosion of revenue from carriage services also contributed to the decline.

During the fourth quarter, Singtel’s wholly-owned Australian subsidiary Optus reported a 10% increase in revenue, while Singtel’s domestic Singapore business reported 1% higher revenue and 5% higher ebitda.

“We have executed well to our strategy amid tougher industry, business and economic conditions. The fundamentals of our core business remained strong,” Singtel Group CEO Chua Sock Koong said.

“We gained market share in mobile across both Singapore and Australia led by our product innovations, content and services that were well-received by customers. Our digital businesses Amobee and Trustwave continued to deepen their capabilities and to scale. Looking ahead, we will accelerate our digitalization efforts to drive better customer experience and improve productivity and cost structure by transforming our processes.”