Tucker stages dramatic turnround at AIA Mark Tucker is well known among investment bankers for the hard time he likes to give them in meetings. Perhaps this is what made the chief executive of pan-Asia life assurer AIA seem so suitable for the boardroom of Goldman Sachs, where he was made a director last month. It is a seat that carries a lot of corporate cachet, possibly more than the one at the Bank of England's governing body, the Court, he held for three years before stepping down in May. However, it is natural to question whether the job of providing critical oversight at Goldman - a highly complex, global financial group answerable to public shareholders - could prove a distraction, according to one top-10 investor in AIA. Mr Tucker responds unflinchingly. "I would not take on additional responsibility if, for one second, I thought anything else would suffer as a consequence," he tells the Financial Times in an interview. Investors in AIA would be unlikely to have many complaints about the work he has done since taking the top job at the life assurer in the summer of 2010. The shares are up more than 50 per cent since it listed in Hong Kong two years ago, outstripping those of most financial groups. Goldman, for example, is down almost 30 per cent over those two years. Among other groups with access to Asia's economic growth, HSBC is down 10 per cent, though Prudential of the UK, AIA's rival, which Mr Tucker ran until mid-2009, is up 33 per cent. AIA suffered during the financial crisis and the near-collapse of its then-parent American International Group, which required a bailout from the US government. Some analysts say it had been slowly losing ground for almost a decade to the Pru and even HSBC in Hong Kong. Mr Tucker has led a dramatic turnround via a simple-sounding strategy of boosting profitability through changing products and cutting costs. "It was not an incredible strategic positioning," he says. It was an execution . . . focused on doing the right thing in the right way with the right people. The company has so far managed to beat expectations doing just that, and has been gaining ground on the Pru in terms of new business and profitability. "The key thing has been the margin expansion from 29 per cent in 2009 to 46 per cent now against limited volume growth," says Mark Kellock at Barclays in Hong Kong. The question is whether AIA can keep making such gains within the business, or if it can rely only on continued market growth in underinsured Asia or on taking share from others. AIA is the biggest insurer in Asia outside of China by the value of its historic business - its embedded value at nearly $30bn is roughly double the Pru in Asia, according to Morgan Stanley. However, the Pru's margins are higher on a pan-Asia basis. In top-line growth, too, the UK-listed group is ahead of AIA. The value of the Pru's new business almost doubled in Asia between 2008 and 2011. Even in Malaysia, AIA's $1.7bn deal for ING's business will leave it behind the Pru in terms of new business market share, according to analysts at Credit Suisse. There are gains AIA can make in the redesign of its Korea business and in smaller markets such as Taiwan, Vietnam and Indonesia. But analysts are also focusing on Hong Kong, where the group lacks a bank partner to sell its products. Mr Tucker says he has had conversations with potential partners, but is in no rush to form a tie-up. "I think we don't rely on that; we can rely on our agency, which is absolutely top quality," he says. He also says market share in terms of profits is much more important than sales. However, AIA will pass an important milestone this year, with its value of new business set to surpass the $968m recorded in 2008 before the collapse to $566m in 2009. It has added $812m in the first three quarters of this year so far. That milestone will no doubt be cause for celebration.