Sbi Life Lines Up Clutch Of Products

SBI Life is planning to launch a slew of new products, including a pure endowment plan, a reducing housing loan mortgage scheme and a pension plan.

The private sector insurance major will also offer a critical illness cover protection rider with the existing policies, which will cover four or six illnesses including cancer, heart attacks, paralytic stroke and transplantation.

Announcing this here at a group insurance scheme launch for customers of two regional rural banks in Andhra Pradesh, R Krishnamurthy, managing director and CEO of SBI Life, said while the pension plan will be launched by end of this year, the other products are ready to be launched within a month.

 

"Our business plans have been affected by the delay in getting nod for the bancassurance route, chosen by us to distribute the insurance policies. We are now revising the targets," Krishnamurthy replied to a query on projections for the current year. The company has sold about 48,000 life insurance policies for a Rs 363 crore sum assured in the last four months.

We are introducing for the first time in the country, a reducing housing loan mortgage product, under which risk coverage will be offered to the housing loan borrowers for the entire term of the loan.

The total insurance premium will be paid upfront by the bank, which will also be financed by the bank as part of the loan, Krishnamurthy said.

The company is now appointing certified insurance officers (CIO), who will be provided with 100 hours of training before venturing into marketing the products. Currently about 21 branches of State Bank of India are distributing the company's policies and it is being planned to be increased to 100 in the current financial year. In addition to SBI branches, the company is also planning to rope in co-operative banks, rural banks and foreign banks to market its products.

Andhra Pradesh governor C Rangarajan, who launched the group insurance scheme said that the share of contractual savings which include provident funds, pension funds and life insurance funds is expected to improve from 3.9 per cent of GDP during the first three years of the ninth five year plan to 5.1 per cent during the tenth five year plan.

Of these, the share of long term savings in provident funds and pension funds is expected to rise sharply from 2.5 per cent in the first three years of ninth five year plan to 3.4 per cent in the Tenth Plan.