Financially troubled American giant American International Group (AIG) is likely to keep the brand name of former Philippine unit, Philippine American Life and General Insurance Company (Philamlife) after the group reorganization is completed.

Philamlife will be integrated under Hong Kong-based American International Assurance Company Ltd (AIA), which was spun off after AIG decided not to sell its Asia operations to pay off billions of dollars of federal debts.

AIA honorary chairman and re-elected chair of Philamlife Edmund SW Tse told reporters during a press conference Thursday that the group is just awaiting regulatory approvals to effect the spin off of Philamlife and other former AIG-related companies into AIA.

“I think that it should be no problem that Philippines be part of AIA. But we are not going to change the name of Philamlife. We'll keep the strong brand name though it is to be part of AIA,” he stressed.

At the height of investor scramble for the purchase Philamlife, observers were concerned that Philamlife carried investment and insurance products named after AIG. After the latter encountered major financial troubles when a London-based unit engaged in what proved to be toxic deals, Philamlife's association with AIG proved to be a concern, even if the local business was already strong on its own.

As Philamlife is spun off to AIA, Tse said the Philippine insurance market leader will be in good company. Tse said the AIA Group has a total assets of $60 billion and a total premium income of about $23 billion. “AIA is roughly twenty times of the total Philippine life insurance industry. So this is a very strong family,” he said.
 
He added that AIA employs about 20,000 workers and 250,000 agents who service about 20 million policyholders.

Tse said the Philippines would become the 14th country to be folded into the AIA Group. It is joined by forer AIG units in Australia, Brunei, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Macau, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam.
 
When asked who will replace Philamlife chief executive Jose Cuisia Jr. who is retiring in less than 3 months, Tse said, “In most of the countries we operate in, we use local talents to run the company. We always engage the local people because they know the market better, they know the people better, they know how to build the market,” he said.
 
Cuisia, who was former governor of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, said the net income of Philamlife hit P3.3 billion last year or roughly about 187 percent higher then the net income of P1.148 billion registered in 2007.