BUPA Arabia Plans To Implement New Projects And Programs To Serve 1.5 Million Customers
BUPA Arabia, the health care specialist insurer, stated earlier this week at a press conference held in Jeddah that its SR160 Million initial public offering (IPO) had opened for subscription yesterday, which is open to Saudi individuals only, will close on March 18.
The offering consists of 16 million shares, representing 40 percent of the company’s share capital after the IPO.
The share price has been determined at SR10. The minimum subscription is 50 shares and the maximum is 100,000 shares.
BUPA Arabia plans to use the funds to improve its systems such as operational, risk management and customer service. In this way it will be able to provide customers with new services such as adding to its pioneering online services, advanced call centres and SMS facilities to its expected 1.5 million customers in the near future.
Loay Nazer, Chairman of Bupa Arabia, said, “We hope that using the funds raised in this way will help us to increase our market share to 20 percent. We anticipate this growth because of increased awareness of insurance generally in the last few years and the full implementation of the health insurance regulation, which calls for compulsory health insurance for all expatriate workers.
“We expect the overall insurance market to more than double to 15 billion Riyals over the next five years. In 2007, it was 6.8 billion Riyals.
“We have been active in the Kingdom for 10 years so we are intimately aware of the healthcare issues related to the region. We try to make sure we provide information not just about our products and services, but about lifestyle in general to help people understand how to stay fit and healthy to live longer and more rewarding lives”, he added.
The allocation to retail subscribers will be performed in two stages. In the first stage, each subscriber will receive a minimum of 50 shares. During the second stage, and in the event there is a sufficient demand by retail subscribers, each subscriber for 50 shares or less will receive the full allocation of what he applied for, provided that total shares allocated do not exceed total shares offered to retail subscribers (16,000,000 shares). The balance of the offer shares (if available) will be allocated on a pro-rata basis.
Shares may be bought online, through phone banking, ATMs and from branches of any of the five receiving banks – SABB, Riyadh Bank, NCB, Arab National Bank and Samba.
BUPA started in 1997 as a joint venture between the Nazer Group and BUPA International. Today BUPA International has established a customer base of more than 450 businesses in more than 1300 companies. To become one of the largest international private health insurance companies, the BUPA Group operating for more than 60 years, serves more than 8 million members in over 190 countries and employs over 46,000 worldwide. It is the leading health care provider in the UK, Spain, and Hong Kong and is growing rapidly in Australia, Thailand and Saudi Arabia.
The BUPA Group follows a long-term strategy that aims to improve services and health care support by investing all of its profits back into the business to develop and improve the quality of its services.
