Ocean Life Insurance expects moderate growth of premiums through sales agents, as Thai farmers are faced with low incomes this year.
"For revenue through sales agents, the growth might not be high as it was affected by problems of the farmers and we also paid more attention to improving the quality of our services and the organisation," said Nusara Banyatpiyaphod, president of Ocean Life Insurance.
Premiums from other channels such as group insurance and alternative channels such as bancassurance are expected to grow in line with the industry.
She referred to the Thai Life Assurance Association (TLAA)'s estimate that total life insurance premium will grow by 9% to 586 billion baht in 2016 after rising 6.7% last year.
Typically, life insurances premiums increase in the fourth quarter as taxpayers buy protective products for personal income tax deductions.
Mrs Nusara said the Thai life insurance industry has potential to grow as the majority of the population still doesn't have any insurance.
Market penetration rate, which is the number of life insurance policies per capita, is very low in Thailand at only 38%.
Mrs Nusara said low interest rate and economic slowdown are the challenges that insurance companies in Thailand are facing.
"We [insurance companies] have to find ways to bring down the cost of delivering our products to new customers and also educate people about the benefits of savings and insurance," she said.
The company has adopted digital technology to provide information to customers and also offers online distribution channels.
Mrs Nusara said that in the past seven years, the company has been going through organisational restructuring to be more customer-centric and to retain talents in the company.
She said one part of the organisation restructure is to set up a central customer department to work with every department to help improve customer satisfaction.
Thai Ocean also partnered with startups to expand its online market by selling insurance products through their selling channels.
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