New home for CBA’s Hong Kong planners
Financial planners who work for the Commonwealth Bank’s (CBA) operations in Hong Kong will now operate under Canadian insurance company Sun Life.
CBA announced yesterday that it had entered into an agreement to sell three of its Hong Kong-based businesses to Sun Life - CMG Asia which looks after life and health insurance, Commserve which handles third party administration schemes of large companies, and Financial Solutions which is the bank’s “very small” Hong Kong-based financial planning arm, according to a spokesperson.
She said the planning business did not have any direct staff and used a franchise dealership model.
“The agents are franchises in their own right, they basically sell a number of Hong Kong based products. At this stage they are all going across to Sun Life,” the spokesperson said.
Of the 450 internal staff who made up the CMG and Commserve operations, the spokesperson said 20 would stay with CBA in Hong Kong to support other CBA regional businesses, including a small business that sells financial products to customers of one of Hong Kong’s largest retail companies, the Cheung Kong Group.
CBA said it sold the businesses because they didn’t fit into its long-term strategy for Hong Kong and China, which is to focus on expanding its presence in banking and wealth management.
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