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The
holding company will help pool cash flows among state insurers
and may potentially help raise funds by seeking strategic
partners, the Cabinet Secretariat said in a statement on its
website.
The move comes as the government plans to restructure life
insurer PT Asuransi Jiwasraya after customers, who claim to be
owed 16.42 trillion rupiah ($1.20 billion) for maturing
bancassurances savings, pressed authorities for an urgent
solution.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo called for further reform still
of the insurance and pensions sector.
"Insurance and pension funds need reform," Widodo said during an
industry event in Jakarta. "Improvements, be it on the
regulatory side, or supervisory or even in capital requirements,
are all important," he said, noting this was not just because of
the Jiwasraya case.
Jiwasraya is the second major Indonesian life insurer to run
into financial trouble after Bumiputera, which has been in a
restructuring process since 2013 following mounting claim
liabilities. The two are among the country's oldest insurers,
formed over a century ago under Dutch colonial rule, and
together have millions of policyholders.
Deputy State-Owned Enterprises Minister Kartika Wirjoatmodjo
told reporters that Bahana would be the holding company.
"From that holding there will be cashflow of 1.5 trillion to 2
trillion rupiah," Erick Thohir, State-Owned Enterprise Minister,
said in the statement on the Cabinet Secretariat's website.
Jiwasraya, which has been put under watch by the Financial
Services Authority's (OJK), needs a 32.9 trillion rupiah ($2.4
billion) injection to boost its risk-based capital ratio to a
minimum requirement of 120%, according to company documents
submitted to parliament.
The insurer's short-term cash needs to pay interest, maturing
policies and other liabilities until the end of 2020 amount to
16.13 trillion rupiah, while it had only 530 billion rupiah of
current assets as of September, according to the documents.
Prosecutors said last month that they believed they had found
evidence of fraud at Jiwasraya and Attorney General Sanitiar
Burhanuddin said prosecutors had found Jiwasraya's former
management had put nearly its entire portfolio in the stock
market and mutual funds in assets with poor returns.
Jiwasraya President Director Hexana Tri Sasongko said after
prosecutors' disclosures last month: "We respect the legal
process and direct all matters related to this (investigation)
to shareholders and law enforcement officials."
(Reporting by Maikel Jefriando; Writing by Fransiska Nangoy;
Editing by Susan Fenton)
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