Premium funding software supplier Red Planet Software says it aims to expand into Asia.

CEO Peter Williams says the company, which works with more than 90% of premium funding and funding providers in Australia and New Zealand, recently surveyed 1000 insurance-related companies in the region.

“About 10% of people we contacted were interested in receiving further information,” he told insuranceNEWS.com.au. “That was a fair bit higher than I expected.”

Mr Williams will visit Singapore, Malaysia and other Asian countries next month. He says commercial insurance is Red Planet’s main area of interest in Asia.

While premium funding is prevalent in mature markets, it is not in Asia.

“I think Asians traditionally… like to pay cash for their insurance,” he said. “Premium funding has been tried over there before and was unsuccessful, but those attempts were a decade ago now and the world has changed a lot since then – especially the financial world.”

In regions such as Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the US about one-third of all commercial premiums are funded. In Australia the average size of commercial premium funded is about $8000, but Mr Williams says the range is from $500 into the millions.