Pakistan’s state-owned insurance company aims to recruit 500,000 people, strengthen Gulf operations

KARACHI: Pakistan’s state-owned insurance company plans to create more than 500,000 jobs at home and abroad under its new marketing structure and Gulf operation plan, its top management said on Sunday.
According to industry stakeholders, the insurance penetration rate in Pakistan amounts to 0.6 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is much below the international average of 3.5 percent.
Given the country’s overall economy, experts say this rate should be somewhere around seven percent.
“Under the five-year plan, we intend to recruit 500,000 educated, unemployed youths in Pakistan by offering them various incentives under the new recruitment policy to enhance the insurance penetration rate,” Khalid Mahmood Shahid, divisional head of marketing at the State Life Insurance Company, told Arab News.
“Under the new policy, recruitment will start immediately and 50,000 people will be hired within the next four months,” he continued. “This number will be gradually increased to 100,000 and the target of 500,000 will be achieved in the next five years.”
The company, the only state-owned entity in the life insurance industry in the country, covers over half a million Pakistani workers in places like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other Gulf countries.
Its management is also keen to enhance coverage of overseas Pakistanis by setting up new offices in the Middle East.
“We are going to revive our Gulf operations and establish new centers in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain under the expansion plan,” Shahid continued. “The same recruitment policy will be adopted in the Gulf region with the hiring of about 3,500 people from the next month.”
He said that his company wanted to increase its focus on Takaful-base insurance for the nationals of the Gulf region.
“We are targeting to increase our business in the region by more than 100 percent and offer job opportunities to those rendered unemployed in the region,” he added.
Other officials at the insurance company said the new strategic direction of the organization had been determined after considerable research.
“We have done extensive market research and are confident that our compensation plans remain highly competitive and attractive to our current, as well as, future agents,” Shoaib Javed Hussain, chairman and chief executive officer of the company, said in a statement on Saturday.
According to the Pakistan Credit Rating Agency (PACRA), the life insurance industry’s market size in the country with respect to the Gross Premiums Written (GPW) was about Rs291 billion in 2021 which was up by 25 percent on an annual basis.
The life insurance sector in Pakistan has a total of nine operational companies out of which the only public sector company, the State Life Insurance, possesses a sizeable share of about 61 percent.
The private sector players with Window Takaful Operations, two are dedicated to family Takaful while six operate as conventional insurance companies.
PACRA says the industry can create a bigger market for itself by introducing shariah-compliant products.

Pakistan’s state-owned insurance company aims to recruit 500,000 people, strengthen Gulf operations