SABAH-BASED IIB Insurance Brokers Sdn Bhd is projecting its premium income to hit RM100mil in the financial year 2003 compared with RM50mil in the previous year.
Its chairman Datuk Pengiran Mohd Hussein Mohd Tahir Nasruddin said it was quite possible for the company to achieve this targeted 100% growth.
He said the country’s insurance brokerage business still offered good prospects and business potential to some 40 players in the industry with companies, local and foreign investors as clients.
“We are giving ourselves a few more years to establish the company as one of the prominent insurance consultants in the country,” Hussein told StarBiz recently.
He said this at the opening of the company’s Johor Baru office at Menara Landmark by the state Science and Technology, Industrial De- velopment, Entrepreneurs, Small and Medium Industries committee chairman Salikon Sarpin.
Hussein said the Johor Baru office, IIB’s third after Kota Kinabalu and Kuala Lumpur, would be the company’s southern region office covering Johor and Malacca.
He said that as the second most developed state in the country after Selangor, Johor offered many opportunities especially in the manufacturing, palm oil plantation and agriculture-related activities.
Hussein said Johor’s close proximity with Singapore offered an added advantage as IIB could serve Singapore manufacturers based in Johor and those planning to shift their operations here from the republic.
“Major ongoing projects and others in the pipeline by the public and private sectors within the next few years in the state augur well for insurance brokerage activities,” he said.
Among the projects are the Port of Tanjung Pelepas; State Administrative Centre in Bandar Nusajaya; Customs, Immigration and Qua- rantine Complex and turning Johor’s Sultan Ismail Airport in Senai into a cargo hub in the southern region.
Hussein said the company would also be looking at petrochemical and heavy industries companies based at the Tanjung Langsat industrial park, which was being developed into a petrochemical hub.
He said it had submitted a proposal to Bank Negara last year to set up an office in Penang to cover the northern states of the peninsula and hoped to open it in the last quarter of 2003.
