The ad resulted in a 30 percent upsurge in enquiries from potential customers, according to Huang. "That's because the demand is right there－when a local market is unable to fulfill customers' demands, they will naturally turn to another," he said.
Huang drew an analogy between insurance products and infant formula, referring to a safety scandal in the mainland in 2008, when some mainland companies added the industrial chemical Melamine to milk powder products, leading to the deaths of six babies and affected about 50,000 others. Fearing for their children's safety, thousands of mainlanders regularly descend on Hong Kong to buy imported baby powder.
"I have read many stories about how mainland customers 'sweep' the supermarkets in Hong Kong. Although there are restrictions on the amount of milk powder that mainland customers are allowed to carry back each time, the controls haven't dampened people's desire to buy the product."
In the last two years, Huang has noticed an influx of prospective clients from China's inland cities, rather than the traditional coastal settlements close to Hong Kong, such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen, in Guangdong province, and Fuzhou in Fujian province.
Zhang Min, 28, from Chongqing in southwest China, has two young daughters. She bought insurance products for her family last year after hearing about them when she had her second child in a Hong Kong hospital. Several of her fellow patients mentioned that they had bought insurance locally, and urged her to follow suit.
Before she decided to make a purchase, Zhang carried out a lot of research and contacted agents from three different companies.
"Frankly speaking, I think the products offered by Hong Kong companies have great advantages, because the city has more than 170 years of history in the insurance industry, and it's a highly competitive market. I had a good experience buying insurance there," she said.
"The agent, a young woman from Guangzhou who graduated from The University of Hong Kong, didn't pitch her products like some of the vendors who contacted me in my hometown. She explained everything on the phone before I arrived, so it only took one day to go through the assessment procedures and sign the contract－and most of the time was spent waiting in line with other buyers. I think at least 80 percent of them were from the mainland, just like me."
Donald Shengbo Tang, head of Hong Kong and China insurance and non-bank finance at Nomura, a Japanese financial holdings company, said that while there are definite advantages to purchasing insurance in Hong Kong, people should view the surge in the number of mainland customers from a rational perspective.
"There will be a further increase in new premiums signed by mainland customers in the next couple of months, but I am not expecting that it will be a huge increase, let alone pose a threat to the mainland market," he said.
Data supplied by the China Insurance Regulatory Commission show that the mainland insurance market has an annual growth rate of 13.4 percent. Last year, the value of insurance policies bought in the mainland was 2.4 trillion yuan, a rise from 1.3 trillion yuan in 2010, according to the commission.
The data shows that last year the total assets of the combined mainland and Hong Kong insurance markets more than doubled to 12 trillion yuan from 5 trillion yuan in 2010.
"As the world's third-largest insurance market, China has great potential for future development. We have witnessed how regulations and product design have improved in recent years," Shengbo Tang said.
"In the long run, Hong Kong will still be a good place for many customers, but the mainland market is expected to continue to expand, so more people will be willing to buy insurance products from local companies."
