Great Eastern Holdings, a subsidiary of OCBC Bank, has rebranded its general insurance arm to build the business as a growth driver.

Overseas Assurance Corporation (OAC) is now known as Great Eastern General Insurance in Singapore, with its operations in Malaysia targeted to follow suit by the end of next month.

The move is part of the company's strategy to strengthen its focus as it works to build its general insurance business into a significant pillar of growth, Great Eastern said yesterday.

Group chief executive Khor Hock Seng said: "With the consolidation of OAC into the Great Eastern brand, there will be greater brand unity across our business lines, which will enable us to fully leverage the strengths of our established brand to offer more compelling propositions."

Mr Khor added that there will likely be more services available online: "We will be boosting our digitalisation capabilities to make it more convenient and easier for customers to do business with us and vice versa.

"With our Travel Smart Premier mobile app, customers can access information and purchase travel insurance on the go, 24/7. This is just the start. We will be enhancing our app capabilities to facilitate the purchase of more products as well as the submission of simple claims in the near future."

A strategic focus of the firm will be to leverage the huge customer database and distribution capabilities of Great Eastern and OCBC, and draw on the "collective strengths to tap new growth opportunities to serve individual and corporate customers".

Great Eastern has $71.1 billion in assets and more than four million policyholders.