The company said its five strategies are: Digital, Life and Health Protection Leader, Sales with focusing on Professional Agency, a single point of contact for customers under one Allianz Ayudhya brand and True Customer Centricity at heart.

The company’s president and chief executive officer Bryan Smith said that last year was another year of success for Allianz Ayudhya.

In addition to achieving the total premiums as planned, its business in Thailand continued to grow.

“Allianz Ayudhya is one of the most important income-generating markets for Allianz in Asia,” Smith said.

“To be in line with the regional business development plan, Allianz Ayudhya has, therefore, set a strategy, to grow its business for seven years until 2025,” he said.

Go-Jek

“For digital, the company is focusing on seeking the right digital partners to develop new business. For example, the company will leverage the global partnership between Allianz and Asian unicorn Go-Jek in exploring business opportunities in Thailand.”

In health leadership, the company aims to become a health insurance company of the future.

“Allianz Ayudhya continues to strengthen our partnership with Thailand’s biggest medical group – BDMS and together provide digital health services,” Smith said.

“The company will also grow Healthy Living to a larger online health community. The objective is to not only to build the engagement between customers and Allianz Ayudhya, but the platform is also acting as a source of data for further developing new business and services.”

With professional agency, the company is developing sales channels through agents, focusing on creating and developing quality agents. The agents are being trained up to serve high-net-worth customers, and there will also be digital-oriented agentS that are set to paperless by 2020.

“The one Allianz Ayudhya concept combines the strength of life and non-life business under the Allianz Ayudhya brand. This allows us to expand our brand value proposition and offer a complete range of products and services to a customer in a one-stop service model.” Smith said.

“The True Customer Centricity (TCC) culture has always been a key driving strategy of Allianz Ayudhya.

“TCC doesn’t cover only policyholders, but sales staff and business partners and agents are also regarded as customers.

“To ensure a successful TCC culture in the organisation, key indicators that we use for measurement include an NPS score, which is a customer satisfaction to the extent that they want to recommend product and services to other.

Internally, we also measure the employee engagement index or Allianz Engagement Survey as a key indicator of a healthy TCC internally.”

Smith said these strategies required the cooperation of all employees.

“We are confident that we will be able to grow Allianz Ayudhya’s business and become the insurer of choice for both customers and employees,” he said.

“In 2019, we are confident to achieve a total premium of Bt33 billion, annualised new premiums of Bt6.5 billion and to become a strong leader in life and health protection.”

If AAV, which owns Thai AirAsia, succeeded in acquiring Nok Air’s shares, the deal will be regarded as a merger under the trade competition laws, with two cases in consideration, the commission said.

Finance Minister Apisak Tantivorawong said that the funds would be drawn from within the ministry and from the state-backed Vayupak Fund.

After the capital increase, the Ministry of Finance’s stake in the combined entity would be slightly smaller than its current 25 per cent holding in TMB, and the ministry’s cost in the merged bank is expected to be Bt3 per share. The ministry’s cost in TMB is Bt3.80 per share.

“The Ministry of Finance, as the major shareholder in TMB, is considering whether or not the purchase of the capital-increase shares will be beneficial,” Apisak said. “Usually, when a bank is bigger, its returns could be better, as viewed by officials’ analysis.

“The ministry may not have the same amount of the current holding in TMB as once a capital increase is done, a portion of new shares will be offered to TBank’s shareholders. Therefore, our stake will lower.”

He said the planned merger will strengthen the new bank by achieving higher efficiency and the ministry, as a shareholder, will also gain.

“They (the related parties of both banks) have negotiated for a relatively long period. Finally, they’ve preliminarily agreed on the planned merger with the signing of a [non-binding] memorandum of understanding [on Wednesday],” Apisak said. “In principle, TMB will acquire TBank and some of its businesses and TBank’s shareholders will receive TMB shares and some cash. The estimated result is a bigger bank. Once the bank is bigger, its efficiency will improve.” Whether the planned merger will be completed in time to be forwarded to this current Cabinet is subject to both parties’ working process, the minister said.

An anonymous source from the Ministry of Finance said the ministry has been in discussions involving the merged bank’s management structure and plans to have a ministry representative sit as chairman of the board of directors, as is now the case with TMB.

The three power projects in the pipeline have total equity contracted capacity of 544MW. The first two are the 160MW Xayaburi power plant in Laos, and the 223MW San Buenaventura power plant in the Philippines, with both projects to be completed and begin commercial operations in 2019. The third project, the 161MW Nam Theun 1 power plant in Laos, will be completed and start commercial operations in 2022, says EGCO.

The investment budget, however, does not include new investment projects and two projects under development – the Quang Tri coal-fired power project in Vietnam and expansion of the Star Energy geothermal power project in Indonesia, the company’s president, Jakgrich Pibulpairoj, told a press conference yesterday.

In 2019, EGCO will continue to focus on sustainable growth and a high return for shareholders, he said. The company will seek new investment opportunities in the power business, an area in which they have expertise in both fossil-fuel and renewable-power plants. The company will also seek new investment opportunities to grow in related business, especially in Asia Pacific. At the same time, EGCO will optimise the efficiency of its commercially operating power plants and ensure that the projects under construction are completed to plan and budget, said Jakgrich.

“EGCO Group sees limited growth opportunity in the local power business in Thailand,” he said. “We will expand our investment mainly in other countries, especially in Asean countries where we already operate, such as Laos, Philippines and Indonesia. At the same time, we will expand to other countries in Asia Pacific, such as South Korea,” said Jakgrich.

“We will seek opportunity to invest in related businesses, such as LNG [liquid natural gas], through cooperation with strong partners, like SK E&S. In Thailand, we are ready to make investment in support of the government’s policy and the new PDP 2018. For IPP, we are ready to participate in the bidding in any area across the country, especially in the West, South or East of Thailand.”

The company believes that aggressive investment will drive business sustainable growth in the long term. The company can show a Bt21.07 billion year-end net profit, up 78 per cent from 2017, and expects to pay the final dividend from the second-half-year operation of 2018 at Bt3.50 per share, and a full-year dividend payment of Bt9.50 per share.

Jakgrich said EGCO Group’s 2018 performance exceeded its goals. Major factors contributing to high profitability included Bt14.17 billion in gains from divestment of three assets – East Water, GIDEC and MPPCL. The company, however, recorded a normal operating profit of Bt9.19 billion, a decrease of Bt73 million.

Highlights of the company’s performance included a 49 per cent investment in Paju Energy Service Co Ltd, the owner and operator of the 1,823MW Paju combined-cycle power plant in Gyeonggi province, South Korea. For this investment, EGCO Group partnered with SK E&S Co Ltd, which has expertise in the LNG business. This partnership not only allowed EGCO Group to expand its business to a new market in Asia Pacific, but also opened the door for the company to enter the LNG business, a high potential future business in Thailand and other countries in the region. The deal was completed on January 15, 2019.

As of February 28, EGCO Group runs 27 operating power plants with total equity contracted capacity of 5,154MW in six countries in the region – Thailand, Lao, Philippines, Indonesia, Australia and South Korea.

There are three projects under construction with total equity contracted capacity of 544MW. The company’s power plants generate electricity using a variety of fuel sources – natural gas, coal, biomass, waste, hydro, solar, wind and geothermal.