Taiwanese distinguish themselves as the most aggressive property investors among Asian insurers with quite high property-to-total asset ratios. For instance, Cathay Life Insurance has property asset amounts as large as Japan’s Nippon Life Insurance, which is stunning considering that the property stock in Taiwan is much smaller than in Japan. Taiwanese life insurers have established overwhelming positions in the domestic property market. Actually, no more significant investors other than insurers have been seen in Taiwan, as only five small T-REITs are listed and Taiwanese property developers do not own massive property portfolios like the Japanese developers. Due to the low interest rates, Taiwanese insurers have been aggressive in property investment even in overseas markets and they apparently believe in property value appreciation based on their long term track-record.
Other than Taiwanese, South Korean insurers have also invested in properties proactively, both domestically and overseas, with twice the investment property-to-total asset ratios as those of Japanese insurers. As the National Pension Fund has been engaged in property investment, property assets have been regarded as one of the main investment objectives for institutional investors. While some conglomerates dominate the South Korean property investment market, life insurers are one of the largest property investors at the heart of the conglomerates groups such as Samsung Life Insurance.
On the other hand, Chinese insurers have recently been allowed to invest in properties since 2010 and still have very low investment property-to-total asset ratios.
However, Chinese insurers already own a great portion of properties due to their sizable total assets. Furthermore, some Chinese insurers have already become active property investors, such as China Pacific Insurance with more than 2% of its total assets invested in properties.
3|Prospects