"This is a great opportunity for insurance companies to reaffirm what their products are all about, which is long-term security," Mark Pearson, chief executive of life insurer National Mutual Asia Ltd, told Reuters.

Investors throughout Asia have been burned by plunging stock values in the wake of a run of currency speculation that began about a year ago in Thailand.

Stock markets in Malaysia and South Korea are at about 50 per cent of their pre-crisis values.

Combined with huge falls in currency values -- about 80 per cent for Indonesia's rupiah -- some people's investments have been almost entirely wiped out.

Many had leveraged their stock investments with loans against property, which has now fallen dramatically in value, putting the price of their debts substantially above assets.

But long-term insurance with savings or investment elements would smooth the peaks and troughsof volatile financial markets to provide solid returns over time, Pearson said.

"All this volatility is short term. We should be stressing our long-term advantages," Pearson said in an interview on the fringes of an industry conference.

National Mutual Asia is the Hongkong-based unit of Australia's National Mutual Holdings, itself a unit of France's Axa-UAP insurance giant.

National Mutual, which manages Axa's business in the region, has substantial interests in Asia principally in Hongkong via its Australia $3 billion unit and through operations in Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

But National Mutual, like other insurers, is having to face the reality that in many parts of the $70 billion-a-year Asian life insurance market, contracts are being cancelled at an increasing rate as people weigh the cost of premiums against putting food on the table.

In crisis-torn Indonesia, where fatal riots have rocked the country this week, the cancellation rate has soared as mainly US dollar denominatedlife policies have been cashed in as the value of the rupiah plummeted against the greenback.

In Thailand too, US dollar-denominated policies have been impossible to maintain as the baht slumped in value against the dollar and premiums became impossible to pay while yields in dollars, no matter how small, were a windfall in local currency.

A high proportion of policies sold in both countries were fixed in US dollars.

New policy sales in both US dollar and local currency terms are expected by companies and analysts to grind to a halt in the worst affected Asian markets.

"We've got to come up with some imaginative ways to help customers stay with insurers during the crisis," Pearson said, adding that encouraging clients to come back when better Times return was crucial to future business development.

Assistance could be in the form of premium holidays, policy suspensions or allowing switching from US dollar payments to local currency without penalties.