South sees over 50% of SBI Life's business

South India contributed to over 50 per cent of the SBI Life Insurance Company's business in the fiscal 2007. SBI Life reported 88 per cent increase in net profit at Rs 3.83 crore in the fiscal 2007 from Rs 2.02 crore in the previous year, the company said.

"There are around 59 modules (division of SBI branches for bancassurance) across the country, of which the Madurai module has been the best performer in bancassurance in 2006-07.

Of the 136 SBI bank branches in the Madurai module, around 124 of them are involved in aggressive life insurance selling. Tamil Nadu, as a state, has outperformed all the other states in business generation," U S Roy, managing director and chief executive officer, SBI Life Insurance, said.

He attributed the reason for the robust performance by the southern states to higher levels of awareness on the need for insurance

Tamil Nadu has been the leader in life insurance policy sales through the agency channel as well as bancassurance. Around 17 per cent of the business generated via the agency channel is from Tamil Nadu, while about 35 per cent is generated through the bancassurance model,an SBI Life Insurance official said.

He also added that a maximum number of the company's MDRT (million dollar round table) agents were from Tamil Nadu in 2006-07. Commenting on SBI Life Insurance's plans for the current year, Roy said the company was planning to double its agency force this year. "Currently, we have around 25,000 agents and we plan to more than double it.

We will certainly maintain a balance between bancassurance and agency distribution, as bancassurance is more cost-effective," he added.

The company's solvency ratio is at 1.8 per cent, and with its paid-up and authorised capital being Rs 500 crore and Rs 1,000 crore respectively, Roy stated that SBI Life had enough head-room for considerable growth.