Wee Ee Cheong, group CEO of UOB, is UOI’s chairman. The partnership with UOB is key to UOI’s growth. For instance, customers who take up a UOB housing loan get home insurance from UOI. The bank’s credit card customers also get travel insurance when they pay for travel with the UOB card.
United Overseas Insurance (UOI) is a direct general insurer, licensed to write all policies other than life. It is also the only locally listed general insurer on the Singapore Exchange.
United Overseas Bank (UOB) holds 58.39% of UOI. UOB is the third-largest Singapore company by net profit, and the fourth-largest by market capitalisation. Comparatively, UOI is smaller with a market cap of $480 million as of Aug 21. In FY2024, for the 12 months to Dec 31, 2024, UOI’s net profit was $29.8 million.
General insurance products have a short time horizon of around one to three years and risk is diversified through reinsurance. Like UOI, general insurers carry higher capital adequacy ratios (CAR) than life insurers. UOI’s CAR is 380%, above the average CAR for general insurers of around 330%. Great Eastern Holdings, mainly a life insurer with some general insurance business, last announced a CAR of 204%.
