SINGAPORE (Dce 12): Insurance startup Singapore Life has apparently caught the eye of City veteran Michael Spencer who is said to be in advanced talks to invest US$50 million ($68.6 million) for a controlling stake, according to a recent report by UK’s Financial Times.
Singapore Life offers a variety of term life and universal life policies and sells them online and through some private banks and brokers. The company claims to be Singapore’s fastest growing life insurer with $6.6 billion of coverage sold to date. Set up in 2014 and started operating last June, Singapore Life was the first local insurance company since 1970 to be granted a licence in the country.
With a fortune estimated at about GBP1 billion ($1.7 billion), Spencer spent his 40-year career in the building up broker Nex Group, which was sold to CME Group for GBP3.9 billion this March. He is now building a portfolio of finance and digital businesses through IPGL, his own investment company. FT says the deal under discussion would take Spencer’s stake in Singapore Life, which is worth about US$150 million, to more than 60%.
The investment comes as the insurance industry experiments with new ways to sell some of its most complex products. Life insurance has traditionally been sold by a broker or agent, who guides the customer through the purchase. Like many other life and health insurers, Singapore Life has also started to offer discounts to customers who exercise and track their activity with devices such as Fitbits.
