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Strategies & Market Trends : World Outlook -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Les H who wrote (1024)	11/7/2002 8:07:34 PM
From: Don Green	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 48770

Postal Corp To Have Deposits, Assets 200% Larger Than Top Bank, Insurer Friday, November 8, 2002 TOKYO (Nikkei)--The Postal Public Corp. is expected to have more than 200 trillion yen in postal savings and over 100 trillion yen in postal life insurance assets at the end of March 2007, according to forecasts released by the Postal Services Agency on Thursday. The new public corporation, which is set to be established next April to take over the activities of the agency, will likely have funds some 200% larger than Japan's top bank and insurer in the private sector. The agency will report its own forecasts on the operations of the public corporation to a government panel charged with setting up the corporation on Monday. Based on these forecasts, the panel will then draw up the mid-term management plan and goals of the corporation. The agency predicts that the balance of postal savings will fall from 235 trillion yen at the end of March next year to 208 trillion yen in four years. The assets of the postal life insurance program are also expected to decline from 123 trillion yen to 116 trillion yen during the same period. A large number of time-deposits with annual interest rates of at least 6%, which were sold in the 1990s, will mature during this period. Many postal life insurance policies are also set to mature, while sales of new policies are expected to stagnate. The corporation's deposits, however, are likely to far exceed those of Japan's biggest bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. (8318), which stood at 67 trillion yen at the end of March this year. Its life insurance assets will easily top the 34 trillion yen in individual insurance policy assets of Nippon Life Insurance Co., Japan's largest life insurer. The agency also projects the number of items of mail handled by the corporation to rise from 26.7 billion at the end of next March to 27.8 billion four years later. According to the agency, parcel delivery companies have complained that the terms set for entering the delivery business of personal messages and mail are too strict. According to earnings results of the agency in fiscal 2001, its mail service operations returned to profit for the first time in four years after cutting costs. Its postal savings business posted a profit of 900 billion yen, up from loss a year earlier, while the life insurance business reported a profit of 171.4 billion yen, almost flat year on year. (The Nihon Keizai Shimbun Friday morning edition)