Thirty-seven foreign insurance companies have begun operations in China and three more are preparing to open businesses, said Wu Dingfu, chairman of China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC).

China's insurance market is now opening up to the outside, said Wu at an international forum on insurance held Monday. He said 27 of the 46 insurance companies listed in top 500 companies by Fortune in 2003 have set up their agencies in China.

China has 69 insurance companies and more than half are foreign-invested, Wu said. Due to some reason, however, foreign insurance companies only account for about 3 percent of China's insurance market, he said. This number could reach 13 or 14 percent in developed areas of Shanghai and south China's Guangdong Province. Statistics with the CIRC show that the growth rate of China's insurance is about 30 percent every year and it has become one of the fastest growing industries in China.

In 2004, the total income of insurance fees in China reached 52.2 billion US dollars and the total assets of China's insurance industry reached 143.3 billion US dollars by the end of 2004, according to CIRC.

Wu said the reform in state-owned insurance companies has completed and three of China's largest insurance companies have gone public abroad.

China will fulfill its commitments to the World Trade Organization, further open up its insurance market and promote co-development of both domestic and global insurance markets, he said.

.Source: Xinhua