Berjaya Sompo Insurance Opening of New Building for Sabah's Regional Hub

Today, 19th December 2008 marks the 20th anniversay of Berjaya Sompo Insurance in Sabah, having set up its operations back in 1988 under the banner of United Prime Insurance. In 1992, it changed its name to Berjaya General Insurance Sdn Bhd, a name which sort of created sensitivity among some politicians and some section of the public in the state, simply because of the word, "Berjaya" was then strongly linked to controversial Parti Berjaya. Well, we got thru this and we moved on although the Parti Berjaya era failed to last...... Last year we changed the name to Berjaya Sompo Insurance Berhad after having worked out a successful "joint-venture" between Berjaya Corporation and Sompo Japan.

So what is the meaning of "Sompo"? In mandarin, this sounds like "injured and insure"or "doubling insurance"....for whatever the reason, is for you to interpret..but its name has created an impact in the market in the state....because of its Japanese positioning. You may say, we almost believe, "Anything foreign is certain to be good", of course discounting China (in recent days..) and all brands from the under developed countries.

On this auspicious day, this 20th anniversary brings back such rustic and nostalgia feeling to me, thinking about the good ole' days of yesteryears. I arrived on Sabah soil in 1988, afternoon of September 1st to be exact. That day was declared by Datuk Pairin, the then Chief Minister as a state holiday as Sabah managed to clinched the Malaysian Cup (football) the night before. Because it was a holiday and the guy who promised to pick me up never turned up.......(accordingly he lost his football boots and he was so upset he lost his mind.....(to me), just what an excuse! I was thinking, that's the first impression of what Sabahan is...). Nevertheless, I called a guy by the name of Thomas Yap of Thomas Howell......that's was the only contact I had. Thomas was a great guy and he quickly got me acclimatised with the surroundings.....and thru him, I met one joker by the name of Philip Loo. Philip is a fun guy to be with and now is still is. His first introduction to the town was the Capital Hotel and the Ang Hotel......where he gave me the first insight about what tariff is all about. The rate at Capital is 1 for local breed and for the white foreign breed, rate 1.5, over at Ang, rate was 0.5 and there Filipinoes and Indon were the only breed available. Please don't ask me what are all these fuss all about.....Ask him!

Quickly I got to know my rennovation contractor, Gary Saw of Sabico. Sabico was the designated contractor to have our Kuwasa office done up. Gary was outstation then, so he sent his buddy, Jimmy Mak to take care of the office rennovation at Kuwasa building. Jimmy is a great guy....drove a BMW those days....with a lot of business in hand. Gary is now a big man, whom I am not able to see.......nowadays. Anyway, those days I had known to be a low-cost rennovation contractor; he was more keen to work on volume contrary to the local and Sarawakian contractors who were emphasising on profit margin. Well, his low-cost adoption strategy did get him somewhere.....long before our Tony Fernandez did it with his AirAsia.

During the soft launch, I met up with old friend, Anthony Wong who is now the MD and CEO of Sabah Times. During the early days he was the MD and majority owner of T.C.B. Underwriting Sdn Bhd. The early days provided good learning ground for me having have to deal with two large underwriting agencies. Underwriting agencies controlled a substantial premium base within the state with most small agents signing up with them to get a slightly better commission terms and extra flexible services rendered. Summing them up the terms for doing business those days were difficult...for insurers to make money was extremely difficult. Fire portfolio were given commission as high as 47.5%, not to mention those profit commission and overriding commission. Motor portfolio's commission were going as high as 15% + 7.5%.... however, this still represented a huge drop compared to more earlier days of 38%. To worsen situation, collection or rather the credit period was more than 3 months and this includes motor premiums payments were made on "payment on account" basis; thus making matching extremely difficult. But many insurers did survived those days. As times went by the controls adopted by Central bank and PIAM were proven to be effective as senior management teams of most companies adopted a more discipline approach in the day to day running of the insurance company.

I remembered the early days where I was the office boy, typist, policy issuer, secretary and officer in charge. The main task as office boy was getting the policies franked (or stamped) at the stamping office. It did helped with the stamping office at Kuwasa but it was hell having had to line up carrying a big stack of policy documents at the stamping office. Typing was done using a manual typewriter and this included policy typing as well. When premium base grew substantially to RM3 million in the 1990, we were not able to cope. With 3 clericals (no executive), I can really feel the exhaustive atmostphere......I was totally exhausted working long hours trying to resolve backlogs....and to make matter worst, HQ refused to employ more staff. Finally they relented on condition that those staff were engaged on temp basis. I can't imagine now having had to worked long hours almost everyday, including Sundays up to 12 am.....

But those were the days that changed me and the way I look at the world. The world to me then was a stage which I was given an opportunity to perform, therefore I cannot be scared of nothing and no barriers were too difficult to overcome. I carried my briefcase traversed every corners of the state looking for any signboards, contacts that I can walked in to "cold-call' and deliver my presence (including United Prime Insurance brand) to them. The process of "cold-calling" was well learnt during my early days working as a Life agent back in street of Kuala Lumpur. All in all I became "street-smart"......yes that's what was being described by the auditors when they audited my operations back throughout my carreer there......from PIAM, Internal Auditor, Group auditors to Central bank auditors...... They all gave me a hard time......and therefore I learned to be a good and smooth operator.

I had a few regrets, after leaving my very long tenure. First, I was not able to build a pool of talents that can take the organisation by leap and bounce.......perhaps mainly as a result of our "task-oriented' working culture and the markets were devoid of graduates capable of training them in prolific non-life insurance proactitioners. Of course before I left for Kuala Lumpur, I focused towards building young people over the last 12 months ..... Well....hopefully they will make it. Anyway, the Sabah markets needed those second-liners.

Doing my MBA also helped in creating in me a much enhanced entreprenuerial mind-set; it is just restructuring the earlier thoughts of being street-smart and sly. Adopting an entreprenuerial mind-set helped me look at myself as an entrepreneur eventhough I am actually in the workforce. Simply said, we as workforce much start looking at ourselves as the traders of our attitude (A), skills (S) and knowledge (K)....ASK?? We must agree to the new thinking that we are actually no difference from a consultant. In order to trade effectively to our dying days, we must therefore continuously elevating our A, S, K. If we can do this efficiently, we will be able to trade in the job markets..... Why "A"? It is simply bring out in us the best brand to the market....because it is our attitude that start us off...least we may procrastinate. Our "S" and "K" must always interchange pushing our ability and forte to the next level....our passion grows by the day with remarkable attitude.....so any young man wishing to trade in the workforce markets, must appreciate ASK in their full tenacity.

With good sets of ASK and not believing that you will lose while working and doing company works much more than the other colleagues....even if they may be paid higher than you, you are destined to go very far!

It is good to illustrate, every dog has its days.......

Moving back to KL I brought along this....the only tool of trade that I possessed....refined by the many years of hard earned education, almost being buried by the many years of exams.... Doing the MBA helped refined my last (almost) 17 years of learning curves at the state.....conceptualised as my future tool of trade to deal with the many unknown. With this I shall end my thoughts......and officially close this Sabah and East Malaysian chapter....

May I thank all my staff who had supported me throughout the many years......in the state, and no doubt they will continue to do so. May I also sincerely express regrets if over the so many years I had said words or acted in any way that had created bad blood among you......you (if you are now reading this blog...)...... may this blood flow and their energy dissipated into charitable form.

Cheers and write your comment if you wish to...... Please ignore those poor englishing.... I only write but not read!