Participating Products

A participating insurance plan is designed to be held long term. Your premiums will be invested in a variety of assets according to our investment strategy, with the cost of policy benefits (such as charges to support guarantees (if applicable)) and expenses deducted as appropriate from premiums or assets. Your policy can share the divisible surplus (if any) from related product groups determined by us. We aim to ensure a fair sharing of profits between policy owners and shareholders, and among different groups of policy owners.

Future investment performance is unpredictable. Through our smoothing process, we aim to deliver more stable dividend and bonus payments, namely annual dividend, terminal dividend, reversionary bonus and terminal bonus, by spreading out the gains and losses over a longer period of time. Stable dividend and bonus payments will ease your financial planning.

We will review and determine the dividend and bonus amounts to be payable to policy owners at least once per year. The actual dividends and bonuses declared may be different from those illustrated in any product information provided (e.g. benefit illustrations). If there are any changes in the actual dividends/bonuses against the illustration or in the projected future dividends/bonuses, such changes will be reflected in the policy anniversary statement.

A committee has been set up to provide independent advice on the determination of the dividend and bonus amounts to the Board of the Company. The committee is comprised of members from different control functions or departments within the organisation both at AIA Group level as well as Hong Kong local level, such as office of the Chief Executive, legal, compliance, finance and risk management. Each member of the committee will exercise due care, diligence and skill in the performance of his or her duties as a member. The committee will utilise the knowledge, experience, and perspectives of each individual member to assist the Board in the discharge of its duty to make independent decision and to manage the risk of conflict of interests, in order to ensure fair treatment between policy owners and shareholders, and among different groups of policy owners. The actual dividends and bonuses, which are recommended by the Appointed Actuary, will be decided upon the deliberation of the committee and finally approved by the Board of Directors of the Company, including one or more Independent Non-Executive Directors.

To determine the dividends and bonuses of the policy, we consider both past experiences and the future outlook for all the factors including, but not limited to, the following:

Investment returns: include interest earnings, dividends and any changes in the market value of the product’s backing assets. Depending on the asset allocation adopted for the product, investment returns could be affected by fluctuations in interest income (both interest earnings and the outlook for interest rates) and various market risks, including credit spread and default risk, fluctuations in equity prices, property prices and foreign exchange currency fluctuation of the backing asset against the policy currency.

Claims: include the cost of providing death benefits and other insured benefits under the product(s).

Surrenders: include policy surrenders, partial surrenders and policy lapses; and the corresponding impact on the investments backing the product(s).

Expenses: include both expenses directly related to the policy (e.g. commission, underwriting, issue and premium collection expenses) and indirect expenses allocated to the product group (e.g. general administrative costs).

Our investment philosophy is to deliver stable returns in line with the product’s investment objectives and AIA’s business and financial objectives.

Our investment policy aims to achieve the targeted long-term investment results and minimise volatility in investment returns over time. It also aims to control and diversify risk exposures, maintain adequate liquidity and manage the assets with respect to the liabilities.

Our current long-term target strategy is to allocate assets attributed to our products into bonds and other fixed income instruments or equity-like assets. The range of target asset mix is different among participating products. Our investment strategy is to actively manage the investment portfolio i.e.: adjust the asset mix in response to the external market conditions. The proportion of equity-like assets would be lower when interest rate level is low and would be even lower than the long-term target strategy so to protect the guaranteed liability and to minimise volatility in investment returns over time, and vice versa when interest rate is high.

The bonds and other fixed income instruments predominantly include government and corporate bonds, and are mainly invested in the geographic region of the United States and Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan). Equity-like assets may include listed equity, mutual funds and direct/indirect investment in commercial/residential properties, and are mainly invested in Asia. Returns of equity-like assets are generally more volatile than bonds and other fixed income instruments. Subject to our investment policy, derivatives may be utilised to manage our investment risk exposure and for matching between assets and liabilities.

Our currency strategy is to minimise currency mismatches. For bonds or other fixed income instruments, our current practice is to currency-match their bond purchases with the underlying policy denomination on best-efforts basis (i.e.: US Dollar assets will be used to support US Dollar liabilities, HK Dollar assets will be used to support HK Dollar liabilities and RMB assets will be used to support RMB liabilities). Subject to market availability and opportunity, bonds may be invested in currency other than the underlying policy denomination and currency swap will be used to minimise the currency risks. For equity-like assets, currency exposure depends on the geographic location of the underlying investment where the selection is done according to our investment philosophy, investment policy and mandate.

We will pool the investment returns from other long term insurance products (excluding investment linked assurance schemes and pension schemes) together with this participating insurance plan for determining the actual investment and the return will subsequently be allocated with reference to the target asset mix of the respective participating products. Actual investments (e.g. geographical mix, currency mix) would depend on market opportunities at the time of purchase. Hence it may differ from the target asset mix.

The investment strategy may be subject to change depending on the market conditions and economic outlook. Should there be any material changes in the investment strategy, we will inform policy owners of the changes, with underlying reasons and impact to the policies.