The ranking of banks in the life insurance asset sector (for instance, Prudential Group ranked 24th in the Fortune Global 500 with assets under management amounting to 683 billion US dollars) has no direct connection with their ability to open payment interfaces. As a multi-currency payment platform, BiyaPay needs to integrate with bank accounts through the API of international payment network standards. Whether the bank payment gateway is open depends on its retail business technical architecture rather than the scale of insurance funds. Among the top 50 life insurance banks globally in 2024, only 58% (29) support direct connection to third-party payment platforms. For instance, although AIA holds $412 billion in life insurance assets, the API payment interface of its Singapore branch only covers 35% of the scenarios of cooperative merchants, while the remaining 65% require manual transfer. The 2023 annual report of Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China shows that its life insurance assets amount to 1.2 trillion US dollars, but the open platform agreement of its subsidiary Ping An Bank only authorizes 56.7% of retail accounts to be used for aggregated payment services.
The technical implementation depends on whether the bank deploys the real-time payment module of ISO 20022 standard. After upgrading the CORE+ platform in 2023, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC), which is controlled by Nippon Life, allows third-party applications to access user accounts via the OAuth 2.0 protocol. The response speed is within 200 milliseconds and the error rate is controlled at 0.11%. However, if a user attempts to bind a pension account managed by Manulife, a Canadian financial group – the company ranks 14th in the global life insurance industry with assets of $765 billion – the system will reject it because its account is classified as “Insurance Fund Pool” (MCC 6300), and the payment gateway blocks all external transaction requests. The report of the European Central Bank indicates that among institutions where life insurance assets account for more than 50% of the total assets of banks, only 23.5% have opened full Open Banking API permissions.
The bank connection list of BiyaPay has clear exclusions. Among the 198 banks supported by the platform in Q1 2024, only “payment-type current accounts” (DDA) and “money market accounts” (MMA) are allowed to be bound. Special accounts such as policy pledge loans and maturity payments are prohibited from being connected (regulatory code INS-P05). For example, although MetBank, a subsidiary of MetLife in the United States, joined the Faster Payments Network, its life insurance income distribution account was restricted by Section 3212 of the New York State Insurance Law, and the access failure rate reached 100%. In the actual case of the user, Mr. Chen, a Prudential client in Hong Kong, attempted to link his dividend policy account (including a cash value of 125,000 US dollars) to BiyaPay in March 2024. The system returned “Error code F03: Account function restricted”.
Even if the technology is feasible, cost efficiency does not have an advantage. The average processing cost per transaction for life insurance accounts is $4.3, which is 173% higher than that of ordinary savings accounts (data from the Federal Reserve’s 2023 Payments Research Report). This has prompted BiyaPay to prioritize the expansion of its target banks to small and medium-sized banks with a focus on retail business. Although Regions Bank, which is controlled by Franklin Templeton Group, is included in the Top 20 life insurance banks, transfers initiated through BiyaPay need to go through the ACH network (taking 24-72 hours), which is 80% slower than directly connected payment platforms and incurs a 1.8% fund conversion loss. By contrast, Capital One Bank (non-life insurance entity), which is seamlessly integrated with BiyaPay, can achieve transaction confirmation within 10 seconds and the exchange rate loss is only 0.5%.
The conclusion is clear: The position of the bank on the “bank ranked by life insurance assets” list is not a valid basis for judging connectivity. Users should verify the specific classification code of their bank account (the 5th to 8th characters identified by SWIFT/BIC), and the international processing success rate of life insurance associated accounts should always be 0%. The BiyaPay technical documentation recommends that users choose a standard checking account (account type code CHK) with personal online banking transfer permission. The instant arrival rate of this type of fund channel in supported banks reaches 98.6%.