Private sector insurer ICICI Prudential Life Insurance is witnessing a greater traction for its newly-launched retirement plans through proprietary channels.

“I should say early responses are good for our newly-launched retirement products. The early response seems to be in the right direction. For these products, we are seeing comparatively greater traction from our proprietary channels,” ICICI Prudential Life Insurance chief bancassurance officer Vinod H told businessline.

Proprietary channels are direct, agency and online channels. In the retirement segment, the insurer currently has three products, of which two plans were launched in the last one month. These are annuity plans.

For the insurer, the annuity business grew by 17.3 per rent year-on-year in the third quarter this fiscal, on back of strong growth in regular premium annuity.

According to Vinod, currently retirement plans are seeing good demands due to prevailing high interest rates scenario and proceeds from non-Ulip products exceeding ₹5 lakh annual premium have become taxable.

Bancassurance tie up

ICICI Prudential Life has as many as 42 bancassurance partnerships. And, around 30 per cent of the insurer’s premium comes through bancassurance.

Currently, the private insurance company has bancassurance tie up with PhonePe in the startup space. On tying up with more start-ups for product distribution, Vinod said, “If we feel that there is a relevant proposition which we can bring in irrespective of the partners, we will be looking at it. And of course, we will be looking at this space very closely.”

Asked about the insurer’s strategy to increase bancassurance partnerships, he said, “The proposition should be strong for us to look out. Every single opportunity to reach out to the customer, we want to be with the distributors. But we should get the right and relevant propositions for the customers. That should be more important than having more players.”

“Every product that we put in, we take it to every distributor. They will have their preferences based on their customer segments. So, that is how they will choose it. It’s not that we prefer a particular channel,” the chief bancassurance officer pointed out.

Notably, the company’s value of new business was ₹ 1451 crore with an APE (annual premium equivalent) of ₹5,430 crore for 9M-FY2024. Value of new business (VNB) margin stood at 26.7 per cent.

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