Comments
Star Union Dai-ichi Life Insurance Company Ltd (SUDLIFE) expects to break even this fiscal, it’s Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer Girish Kulkarni has said.
This assumes significance as the life insurer would achieve this milestone in a short span of five years since the launch of its operations in February 2009.
SUDLIFE—a three-way joint venture between Bank of India, Union Bank of India and Dai-ichi Life —is primarily riding on the bancassurance play offered by the two public sector bank shareholders of the joint venture.
“I will attribute this (likely quick break-even) to our promoters. We are leveraging on their entire 9,000 bank branches. Our strength lies on these 9,000 branches as it reduces my infrastructure expenses and customer acquisition cost”, Kulkarni said.
Also, the life insurer has focused on being a “frugal operator” and “not be flashy” about the locations of its offices, which currently number around 67 in the country.
“We believe in simple offices and providing greater amount of customer services. We don’t spend on non-essentials. Our operating model is cost effective and that is the differentiator”, Kulkarni said.
MULTI-CHANNEL
Although bancassurance will continue to be mainstay for the company, it is slowly but surely unfolding its multi-channel aspirations.
“Focus will remain on bancassurance. On a parallel basis, we will keep putting small but cost effective efforts on agency”, Kulkarni said.
SUDLIFE had last year rolled out a pan-India agency network and currently has 6000 agents across 60 locations.
“This year, we will add another 4,000 agents taking their overall strength to 10,000”, Kulkarni said.
He expressed confidence that the agency force would be able to ride on the brand strength of the promoters of the life insurance company.
Also, plans are afoot to enter the online space and launch an online term product by September this year.
Currently, the company does not sell its products online.
“Aspiration is to get seen as a viable alternate in the online space to our customers. We should not miss the opportunity to get visible”, he said.
On an overall basis, SUDLIFE is eyeing a 24-25 percent growth trajectory in individual new business premium this fiscal
CAPITAL RAISING
Kulkarni said that SUDLI has no plans to mobilise capital this year to fund business growth.
This life insurer is currently capitalised at about ₹ 420 crore.
There has been no further capital infusion since the initial contribution of the three promoter shareholders at the time of formation of the joint venture.
Currently, Dai-ichi Life Insurance has 26 percent stake in the joint venture.
This Japanese life insurance major can go upto 44 percent if the foreign direct investment (FDI) limit in insurance sector were to get hiked to say 49 percent this year, according to Kulkarni.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.