BEIJING, April 4 -- New China Life Insurance Co., the nation's fourth-biggest insurer, may raise as much as $800 million selling shares overseas in an initial public offering, as it seeks funds to expand, its President Guan Guoliang said.

    The Beijing-based life insurer is in the process of selecting investment banks to arrange the sale, Guan told Bloomberg News in a phone interview from Beijing. The company plans to sell the shares this year, Guan said.

    "We may raise between $700 million and $800 million," Guan said. "We won't consider it if it only gives us a few hundred million as we need capital for future business development. No decision has been made yet."

    Life insurance premiums collected in China jumped 76 percent to $6.65 billion in February from $3.77 billion in January, the China insurance regulatory commission said last month. The nation's 1.3 billion citizens are turning to commercial insurers for protection as the government is scaling back welfare benefits.

    New China Life reached the regulator's capital reserves requirement earlier this year after it sold 1.35 billion yuan ($163.1 million) of subordinated debt to boost capital, Guan said. The company was one of the many Chinese insurers that received a regulatory warning last year for not maintaining enough capital.

    No Domestic Listing

    The company shelved plans for a domestic A-share listing in China, Guan said, after the Shanghai Composite Index slumped by a third since a year ago.

    "We're now studying plans to list overseas," Guan said. He refused to identify the investment banks pitching for the IPO business.

    New China Life collected 18.74 billion yuan of premiums last year, about half the amount collected by China Pacific Insurance Co., the nation's third-biggest insurer by premiums, according to the insurance regulator's Web site. China's insurers collected 323 billion yuan of life premiums in 2004, a 7 percent increase from the year earlier period.

    New China Life was set up in Aug. 1996 and has 34 branches and 120,000 staff, the company said on its Web site. The company, which has been planning to sell shares to the public since 2001, sold a combined 24.9 percent stake to Zurich Financial Services AG, International Finance Corp., Japan's Meiji Life Insurance Co. and Netherlands Development Co. in 2000.

    China Life Insurance Co., the nation's biggest life insurer, Ping An Insurance Co., the second-biggest, and PICC Property & Casualty Co., the biggest general insurer, all sold shares in Hong Kong since November 2003. (Bloomberg)

(Source: CE.cn )