As Cocolife president and CEO, Atty. Martin Loon has breathed more life into the business when he honored lives above and beyond profit. And the returns were beyond compare: life-saving for people his business promised to protect; fulfilling for him and his team.
By Joanne Rae M. Ramirez
Cocolife president and CEO lawyer Martin Loon made a crucial decision as the pandemic was starting to claim lives in the Philippines: honor COVID-related claims of clients even as pandemics were not covered by their policies.
“And I’m very proud because we covered almost a billion pesos worth of COVID-related claims since the start of the pandemic. And we chose to cover that in the first few days of the pandemic. We made that decision,” says the young lawyer, who is the founding partner of his own firm and was the youngest member of the Consultative Committee to Review the 1987 Constitution.
Martin says he made the decision as a Filipino, not as a businessman.
“Pandemics are usually an exclusion in insurance contracts,” Martin points out. “Meaning to say, insurers specifically exclude those things. In most of our contracts, at least, we exclude these kinds of claims or coverages. But I think on the third day of the lockdown, I made an announcement that we were going to cover. I just said, ‘No, we have to offer this because people have to have a level of certainty, our clients have to have a level of certainty. So we really decided to cover.”
In office for a reason
Martin, who found himself the youngest president of Cocolife at age 32, at first thought his office was going to be a “burden.”
“I never planned to be president of an insurance company or be an executive in the corporate world. I always thought I was just going to be a teacher and a lawyer because I also teach in UP. And I was teaching in Ateneo at that time,” shares the now 35-year-old Martin.
But when the challenge came and the board asked him to take on the position, Martin feels he received the, “grace of the office.” He reflects, “Sometimes you may not be the most experienced or the most intellectual, but when you’re chosen for a particular position, when you’re chosen for a particular role, I think God gives you everything you need to succeed at that role, to succeed at that mission.”
“I also felt it was an opportunity to serve and an opportunity to grow, and to try it out. And as the years went by, I’ve been president for almost two years now, it has become more of a blessing. And when I think about it, I sometimes get emotional because if I look back at how we started in the company, how my team and I started, how we grew, and how things were and how things are today, we could not have done it on our own. It was really providence. It was really the grace of the office that gave us that opportunity to make things better, not just for ourselves, but for the employees, the clients, the people we’re serving.”
Not that Martin isn’t eminently qualified for the position. He pursued his Law studies at the University of the Philippines College of Law, where he obtained a Juris Doctor degree. He was a member of the Order of Purple Feather, UP Law Honor Society, the UP University Student Council and the Sigma Rho Fraternity. He obtained his master’s degree in Law at the Georgetown University Law Center.
In less than two years under his leadership, Cocolife, a private corporation, marked the highest net income in its 42-year history. Martin, who was elected Cocolife president in March 2019 despite being the youngest member of the board, spearheaded reforms that reaped Cocolife’s first international awards – International Business Magazine recognized Cocolife as the “Most Outstanding Life Insurance Company in the Philippines” and the “Most Outstanding Healthcare Provider in the Philippines,” both for 2021.
Cocolife was also hailed recently by Global Business Review magazine as “Best Life Insurance Company Philippines” for 2021 and “Best Insurance Customer Service Provider,” while Martin received the “Young CEO of the Year Philippines” for 2021.
Martin believes the cornerstone of Cocolife’s success these past two years has been, and is, good corporate governance.
“It’s really institutionalizing very good corporate governance. From procurement to everything, we’re very strict. We make sure that there are no leaks. We make sure that everything goes through the right processes. We make sure that everything we procure is for the best of the company. We make sure that the board is very much involved in every decision that the company makes. We’re very transparent with our leadership. That’s one. And number two, I think we’ve done our best to gain the trust and confidence of our clients. They continue to stay on despite the pandemic. I think that it’s really the commitment, the organization made. There were times when my team and I would sleep in the office at the start of the pandemic and we stayed there.”
Justice for all
Martin, a professorial lecturer of International Security Studies and Politics and Governance at the Ateneo de Manila University; and a professorial lecturer in Insurance Law at the UP College of Law, was inspired by his grandfather Jose Azcarraga, a provincial lawyer who took on pro bono cases. Before joining the corporate world, he, too, took on some pro bono cases.
“You get the chance to defend people who need defense. You get the chance to assert the rights of people who really have no means to assert their rights. When I was a volunteer lawyer in the Office of Legal Aid in UP, I got to see how some of our countrymen deal with legal problems. They have very limited resources to afford lawyers, very limited resources to afford the representation. Seeing the suffering of these people, you realize law capacitates you to really help out. And to me, that affirms my decision to this day to pursue law.”
Even as he transitioned to the corporate world, Martin didn’t lose his heart for justice. Martin championed the call to cover COVID-19-related insurance claims, despite pandemics being an exclusion to such claims. He was one of the first to make such a call. This led Cocolife to positively impact the lives of 50,000 Filipino families with about P1 billion pesos in COVID-19-related claims.
“We had been doing business for 42 years in the Philippines at the time. I felt that if we were able to do this during good times, we should also be there for the Filipinos during bad times. It shouldn’t just be a one-time thing. You shouldn’t reap the benefits during good times, but refuse to accept responsibilities during bad times. I think that our role is to be there in good times and bad times for Filipinos,” believes Martin, who was recognized by the Asia CEO Awards as an awardee of the Circle of Excellence for the category “Young Leader of the Year” 2021.
Despite paying out P1 billion in COVID claims, the Cocolife ship remains steady and seaworthy. How so?
“We cut down on a lot of expenses — no travels, no perks, no transportation. And then we increased our premium sales also. We were able to sell more policies. Sales continued even during the lockdown. So, that really helped us a lot, the premiums increased further. It was a blessing at the same time, an opportunity to be a blessing to others.”
Despite the P1-billion price tag on Martin’ decision to honor COVID claims even if pandemics were an exclusion to their contracts, the Cocolife board supported him.
“The board readily agreed when we gave the rationale for that decision. And I was telling them how we respond to the pandemic will really define how the future generations of Filipino insurance clients of
Cocolife will remember us. I don’t want to be remembered as an insurance company that shirked from the responsibility that came out of this pandemic. I want to be remembered as a company that really was there, was consistently there.”
At the end of the day, it was all about advocating for the better interest of the Filipino.
“And it turned out well. It’s not nice to be remembered as a company that ran away or that stopped paying claims just because it was an exclusion or just because the pandemic happened. I think, how we will be remembered would be priceless,” believes Martin.
Indeed, by going above and beyond the call of duty and the lure of profit, one’s success can be the grace of many more.
