ING Vysya Life hopes to double premium income

ING Vysya Life Insurance Company Ltd, headquartered in Bangalore, expects to capture a 2 per cent share of the insurance market in the country by the end of 2008.

Kshitij Jain, managing director and chief executive director of ING Vysya Life, told a news conference in Hyderabad on Wednesday that the insurance market in the country was growing at upwards of 30 per cent in premium terms, and the company hoped to grow at double that pace by 2008.

ING Vysya Life achieved a market share of 1.1 per cent in the first quarter of the current fiscal. Its premium business stood at Rs 700 crore during the last financial year.

The company announced the launch of ‘ING Positive Life’, a unit-linked insurance plan designed for ING Vysya Bank customers. The plan allows the customer to enter at as low as Rs 834 a month.

The premium can be invested in any of five fund options – debt, secure, balanced, growth or equity – besides offering liquidity when needed by allowing one partial withdrawal each year after the fifth year of the policy.

Jain said, “We will leverage ING Vysya Bank’s network of over 400 branches, understandings, sign-ups and referral agreements with about 100 co-operative banks and the more than 40,000 tied agents in 173 cities across the country, to access the 1.5 million customers of the bank for this product. Though we have introduced this unit-linked plan only for the existing customers, we are also looking at the possibility of acquiring new customers significantly.”

ING Vysya Bank contributes 10 per cent to the overall business of ING Vysya Life and that is expected to go up with the launch of the new product.

“ING Positive Life will facilitate access for ING Vysya life insurance products to the rural markets, where the life insurance business is yet to pick up,” Jain said.

About 100 ING Vysya Bank’s branches are located in rural areas. The interior markets accounted for 28 per cent of ING Vysya Life’s total insurance business last year.

In Andhra Pradesh, the bank has some 200 branches, which account for 25 per cent of ING Vysya Life’s business.

Source: Business Standard