The Hindu Business Line : SBI Life plans to expand business to Rs 6,000 cr

Kolkata, Aug. 13 In its bid to double the size of business to more than Rs 6,000 crore in the current year over last year, SBI Life Insurance, the life insurance arm of State Bank of India, has initiated several measures.

These include, among others, creating more zones, delegating more authority to each zonal head and broad-basing the incentive mechanism for distribution of products through the banking channel.

“Our health insurance products will hit the market shortly,” Mr Uday Sankar Roy, Managing Director & CEO of SBI Life, told Business Line here on Monday. “The products will be very customer-friendly”. The mirco-insurance products, especially for self-help groups too, would be ready within the next few month, he said.

More zones

The number of zones, he pointed out, had been increased to eight from four. For example, the east zone now comprised West Bengal, North-East and Andaman & Nicobar Islands.

Earlier, Orissa, Bihar and Jharkhand were under the east zone. Orissa has now been tagged to Andhra Pradesh while Bihar and Jharkhand to Uttar Pradesh.

The zonal heads would now also coordinate the operations of different distribution channels to achieve growth through inter-channel homogeneity, Mr Roy said.

“The focus so far has been on topline growth but we would like to lay emphasis also on bottomline growth through offers of proper product-mix,” he said.

Since the banking channel accounted for 55 per cent of SBI Life’s total business, it was imperative that those active in the channel were suitably rewarded to make them responsive to the current market dynamics, he said.

Growth areas

SBI Life, according to its Managing Director and CEO, has noted that predominant growth areas were not necessarily the metros.

“The predominant business modules are mostly cities and towns outside the metros and we’re therefore focusing on certain non-metro areas to tap our business,” he said.

“The potential for growth in insurance business is very high,” Mr Roy said pointing out that despite competition the state-owned Life Insurance Corporation of India was posting 100 per cent growth. “In due course, we would like to position SBI Life as the alternative to LIC,” he added.