ING Vida looks to up life offering in 2004

ING Vida, the life insurance wing of the Chilean unit of financial group ING, is looking to up its individual offering next year, Santiago newspaper El Mercurio quoted its CEO Eduardo Sanchez as saying. An aggressive business strategy will be targeted to boost the sales of ING Vida's traditional life products as well as complementary pension products, known as APVs, the insurer's major revenue generators this year, Sanchez said. ING Chile forecasts total profits of around 26.5bn pesos (US$44mmn) in 2003, based not only on a strong investment-return ratio from the local stock market but also on ING Vida's control of administration costs, Sanchez added. Chilean financial services group ING Chile is a subsidiary of Dutch group ING (NYSE: ING).