ING Life to add 15,000 agents

ING Vysya Life Insurance Company, a part of Dutch financial giant ING Group, is hiring over 3,000 advisers (agents) every month to distribute its products, according to the company’s managing director and chief executive officer, Kshitij Jain.

“We will continue to hire upwards of 3,000 advisers a month for expanding our business in the country,” Jain told Business Standard adding that the net addition of advisers this year would be over 15,000.

ING currently has 70,000 distributors of which 30 per cent are women. The average sale of an active agent stood at 2.2 policies a month and the average premium amount stood at Rs 18,000.

In 2008-09, ING registered a 24 per cent growth in premium income and 27 per cent growth in the number of policies in force.

“This high growth rate has been achieved as we are mainly dependent on our own captive distribution network,” Jain said.

He said the company’s paid up share capital currently stood at Rs 1,200 crore and has the board’s approval for raising it up to Rs 1,600 crore.

For meeting the business requirement of the current year, the shareholders have already infused an additional capital of Rs 100 crore and Rs 58 crore more would be infused in the coming months.

“After this, there is no need for any further capital infusion. More so, as our renewal premiums have overtaken our new premiums,” Jain said. Of the total premium income of Rs 1,442 crore last year, ING’s renewal premium income accounted for Rs 750 crore.

According to Jain, ING’s annual loss would come down to about Rs 140 crore in the current year as against a loss of Rs 190 crore last year.

The company would break even in 2011-12, the tenth year of its operations. It would take some more time to wipe out the accumulated losses.

The company’s focus this year would be on maintaining the annual growth rate without increasing the operational expenditure, increasing the contribution from traditional products and strengthening the product portfolio.