Max Life Clocks Rs 1000 Crore Business

Max New York Life Company has clocked business worth Rs 1,000 crore till September this year and has managed to exceed its projections on premium by 20 per cent while keeping expenditure lower by 10 per cent below the estimates for the period.

Refusing to divulge further details Max New York Life chief executive officer and managing director Anuroop Tony said today that the largest policy sold by the insurance company is worth Rs 5 crore.

He also said the company would continue to follow a policy of investing in debt instruments and has thus far stayed away from putting any money in equities. Singh said the life insurer has set aside 1 per cent of the premium income in a contingency fund.

He said the company has decided to extend loans up to 90 per cent of cash value of the policy purchased by a customer at reasonable interest rates.

He spoke about the company's business at length and said that Max New York is examining the possibility of launching single premium products. He said that the Analjit Singh-promoted Max India would be investing about Rs 350 crore in the insurance joint venture over the next three years. The company has already hiked its equity to Rs 200 crore and has a solvency margin of 1.65 as against the IRDA-prescribed norm of 1.5.

He said that Max India and New York Life, the two partners, have already decided to turn the company into a 50-50 joint venture once the government raises the foreign investment cap for the sector from the present 26 per cent. "This is in line with the policy adopted by New York Life globally," Singh said.

Singh also said that two of the 1,600 agents of the company have qualified for the Million Dollar Round Table though two months of the current year are still to go.

He said that company has been devoting a lot of effort in training its agents and is subjecting them to 153 hours of training against the regulatory norm of 100 hours. Singh also claimed that Max New York Life has the highest pass percentage for agents which is 98.7 per cent while the average level for other companies is 80 per cent.