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Hyderabad , Dec. 12

AMP Sanmar has unveiled a special project aimed at the rural masses in Andhra Pradesh under which initiatives for awareness on insurance and pension products would be taken up.

The Financial Deepening Challenge Fund of the UK is supporting the project titled `Akshaya Jyothi' (Light of wealth) for the Department for International Development (DFID). The project aims to enhance coverage of insurance and pension products in the semi-urban, rural and interior areas of Karimnagar, East Godavari, Chittoor and Guntur districts.

The department has approved a grant of £97,437 (Rs 76,97,523) spread over a three-year period to support the project by covering costs towards setting up, marketing, recruitment and training, and the subsequent costs towards building insurance awareness in the target markets, designing of customised products and creation of distribution network.

Announcing this at a press conference here on Friday, the AMP Sanmar Managing Director, Mr Graham Meyer, said the main target segments were the poorer sections of the society, including farmers, artisans, bidi and daily workers.

Under this programme, AMP Sanmar, the life insurance joint venture between the Chennai-based Sanmar group and the Australian insurance major AMP, would offer its entire portfolio of life insurance products, including endowment, whole life and term policies. The products would have features such as low sums assured, low minimum premium and cash payment option. The add-on riders of illness cover and accident benefit would also be offered except for term assurance.

The company's special product for the rural markets — a one-year renewable term product — is priced at a premium of Rs 100 per life cover of Rs 10,000 and marketed over the counter. It expects this product to be a premier vehicle for spreading awareness in the target areas.

According to the fund's Country Manager, Ms Chandrika Singh, the DFID unveiled in the country for the first time the initiative called FDCF in Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh couple of years back. The fund has a corpus of £22 million and is working in 17 countries in South Asia and Africa. It provides matching financial assistance to profit-oriented sound business organisations operating in the financial services sector.

The objective of the fund was to encourage these organisations to design and develop innovative financial products and services for the lower strata of the society who were previously denied an access to any kind of formal financial products and services, Ms Singh said.

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