Public Disclosure

Public disclosure in pursuance of MAS Notice 124 “Public Disclosure Requirements” for financial year ended 31 December 2022


EQ Insurance Company Limited is a homegrown general insurance provider. Established since 2007, we built our initial insurance success through the construction-related industry and have since grown to underwrite all classes of non-life insurances to a diverse group of personal and commercial clients.

Our key business segments are motor, property, casualty, and accident and health insurance.  To provide a more holistic suite of products to our clients, we are also underwriting marine (cargo and pleasure craft) and selected specialty lines.

We are a rapidly growing company backed by a proven management team and a strong network of intermediaries, including agents, brokers and financial advisers.

EQ Insurance is part of the Citystate Group – a service oriented group of diversified companies with established brands in travel, general insurance underwriting and broking, food processing and distribution, preschool education and enrichment programmes, restaurants, property management and events managements.

Citystate Capital Asia Pte Ltd is headquartered in Singapore.  It owns both general insurance companies and insurance brokerage firms.  In particular, it has 100% shareholdings in EQ Insurance.

More information about our profile, key products and business objectives can be found under ‘About Us’ on our website.

 

 

EQ Insurance is committed to upholding good corporate governance. We have various management and risk committees, comprising of the managerial staff of the Company, meeting regularly to deliberate on matters relating to the key types of risks under their respective supervision.

These committees including Credit Control Committee, Audit Committee and the Investment Committee, have direct reporting to the CEO and Board.

Risk Management is the responsibility of all management and employees of EQ Insurance.

The Company has a Fraud Risk Management policy which scopes the types of fraud risks - Internal Fraud, Policyholder and Claims Fraud and Intermediary Fraud, that are detrimental to the business.  The business units assess these risks against their various functions to determine the exposure/vulnerability, and put in place mitigating procedures and internal controls around these functions to manage these risks.

The Company also has a whistle-blowing policy which is overseen by a Director. Under the policy, an employee can raise any concern to the Director about possible improprieties in financial or other matters without fear of reprisal.

More information about our corporate governance and policies and be found under Corporate Policies on our website.

Risk Management is important to EQ Insurance as we may face uncertainties in our pursuit to achieve continuous growth value for our stakeholders. We manage the uncertainties of their associated risks and opportunities through a robust Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) system and Asset-Liability Management (ALM) framework.

Our ERM Committee comprises of the Chief Executive Officer, the Group Financial Controller and the Compliance Officer. It assists the EQI Board of Directors to formulate the risk policy and operates adhering to the risk appetite statements for the risks below:

  1. Market Risk
  2. Credit Risk
  3. Strategic Risk
  4. Insurance Risk  (Underwriting, treaty reinsurance and reserving)
  5. Operational Risk
  6. Liquidity Risk
  7. Concentration Risk
  8. Other Risks – Catastrophe

In line with the Enterprise Risk Management framework, these risks are categorized and managed under a number of risk dimensions. Along these risk dimensions, EQI has developed a 3-level risk matrix recognizing how each risk dimension will impact, likely to occur and expose our operation. The measure and quantifying of each risk category help us to address these risks in our daily business operations.

EQ Insurance manages its asset and liabilities together by adopting an asset and liability management (“ALM”) framework, which comes under the purview of our Investment Committee.

To ensure that assets are available to fund policyholders’ obligations or other liabilities when they become due, while optimising returns for assets and allocated capital, we ensure that the following are closely monitored:

Liquidity Risks

Management closely monitors and maintains an adequate level of cash liquidity in the current accounts to meet daily operational needs and business related financial obligations.

Counterparty Credit Risks

Investments and financial transactions are restricted to counterparties with high credit standings. A majority portion of the investment portfolio shall comprise of rated investment instruments. Cash and bank balances are placed with financial institutions with high credit standings.

Exposure Limits

Management monitors sector, industry and single-party exposure limits closely. For listed equities, the total investment should not exceed S$1m for any one counter.

Stop Loss Policy

The listed equities portfolio shall be subject to a stop-loss policy of 20% applied against the average costs of investment.

EQ Insurance has in-place an insurance underwriting strategy that promotes diversification in the types of insurance risks accepted.

Our New Product Checklist (NPC) takes us through a systematic identification, assessment, measurement, monitoring, controlling and mitigating the risks, and it helps us form a prospective view of the associated risk profile, and capital needs, thus enabling our business strategy, risk management and capital allocation to be coordinated in order to achieve maximum financial efficiency and adequate protection for our policy owners.

All new products must be signed off by the originator (i.e. the main handler of the new product design, product owner (i.e. Head of Motor Underwriting, Head of Accident & Health, etc.) and the Chief Executive Officer.

Our detailed underwriting guidelines, treaty limit and underwriting acceptance structures take into consideration regulatory requirements and business needs underpin our risk tolerances.

Close risk monitoring and reporting (including a monthly management meeting) allow detection of potential deviations from our tolerance at an early stage.

Quantitative and qualitative information about the rationale and methodology on which EQ Insurance determine its technical provisions may be found in our audited Financial Statement .

EQ Insurance has met the minimum fund solvency requirements for our insurance funds and the minimum capital adequacy requirement prescribed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

More quantitative and qualitative information about capital adequacy including policies and processes for managing capital and assessment of our capital adequacy may be found in our audited Financial Statement .

Our Investment Committee comprises of 3 Directors who meet on a monthly basis to make investment and divestments decisions for the shareholders' funds, based on clear approval limits, asset allocation guidelines, risk management and review process.

The Company's investment objective is to strike an optimal balance between growth and return, by investing in medium to low risk investments and medium to longer term fixed income instrument, while ensuring that we have minimum foreign exchange exposure risks and adequate industry / sector diversification.

The Accounts Department updates all investment reports on a monthly basis and circulates a complete set to the Investment Committee.

More quantitative and qualitative information about our financial instruments and investment objectives may be found in our audited Financial Statement .

Quantitative and qualitative information on our financial performance may be found in our audited Financial Statement .

For more information, you may refer to our Environmental Risk Management - Disclosure report.