AVIVA TO GET INTO HEALTH BIZ

Madrid: Aviva Life Insurance, the world’s fifth largest insurer, on Tuesday announced its foray in the Indian health insurance market. Aviva is already present in the Indian life insurance market, in a joint venture with Dabur. Aviva on Tuesday launched a product that guarantees maturity benefits regardless of any claims made during the term of the policy. This is supposed to be the first health insurance plan to offer such a benefit.

Speaking at the Aviva annual insurance summit here, Aviva India MD and CEO, Mr Bert Paterson, said, ¨This product has all benefits that would help policyholders to be prepared for contingencies at any point during the term.¨

He said that India’s health insurance market is largely untapped and the company, which is bullish on India hopes to be amongst the top five insurers. Aviva Investors, the company’s global fund has a corpus of £315 billion and is interested in entering India, Mr Paterson said. Aviva Life Insurance is currently present in India in a joint venture with Dabur, which owns a 74 per cent stake in the venture. Aviva says it has over 40 million customers globally. It has more than £364 billion of assets under management.

Aviva has recently signed a £505 million deal for managed IT outsourcing. The nine-year deal was sealed with WNS, an Indian managed IT outsourcing provider, which will provide business process services to the insurer.

Source: Deccan Chronicle, Asian Age, The Telegraph