AMP Sanmar aims at 200% rise in premium income

AMP Sanmar, the Chennai based joint venture between Australia based AMP and India's Sanmar group, is targeting to achieve 200 per cent growth in premium income for the current fiscal and about 350 per cent jump in the next fiscal.

The company collected a new business premium of Rs 5.98 crore last fiscal and expects to earn Rs 17 crore this year, to be followed by a whopping Rs 75 crore for the next fiscal.

In the current fiscal, up to the period ended October, the company underwrote a first year premium of Rs 8.07 crore.

It was ranked lowest in the list of twelve private sector companies in terms of gross premium collected according to the Irda statistics.

"To achieve the targets, we are planning to increase our countrywide branch network to 70 from the existing 46 in the next six months.

"Our agent strength will also be ramped up to 5,000 by December end from the existing 4,000 and to 10,000 by end of 2004," Graham Meyer, managing director of AMP Sanmar said at a press conference here today.

The company is also planning to increase its capital base from the existing Rs 125 crore to meet the solvency margins. We have not yet taken a decision on how much to infuse afresh, Meyer replied to a query.

Having grown so far primarily on our own sales network, we are now concentrating on the third party distribution channels for achieving the exponential growth, he added.

The company has recently entered into a tie up with Chennai based Shriram Chit Funds for distribution of its products and is planning to enter into more tie ups with cooperative banks and regional rural banks in the south.

Currently the company earns about 15 per cent of its premium through third party distribution channel and expects to increase it to 25 to 30 per cent within a year.

We have chalked out a strategy to concentrate more on the semi-urban and rural areas, especially B and C class cities where many of the other private sector companies are not present, S Balachander, head (retail distribution) said.