Insurance to be available on Cell phones

India First Life Insurance is a joint venture among Bank of Baroda, Andhra Bank and UK-based Legal & General. They stepped late in the insurance sector but have done well in bancassurance model. P Nandagopal is the managing director and CEO of India First Life Insurance.

Business strategy for growth:

· He believes that since they are a new company and have entered late into the insurance, they can start afresh. There strategy will take into account the new regulatory changes right from the start. Their balanced approach will not be affected by the changes in regulation.

· They will be completing one year of operation this month. They boast of R600-700 crore worth of insurance policies sold in the very first year of business

· Their product mix comprises 90% of Ulip and remaining are traditional products. Total assets under management (AUM) is at R1,000 crore, 60% of which was constituted by Ulips.

· While many insurers are reducing the share of Ulips contribution in their growth portfolio, India First Life Insurance plan to continue to focus on Ulip products, rather than non-transparent and highly priced traditional products in future too. As they believe that even the traditional products bear risks.

· They don’t believe in technical differentiation of products but believe in creation of need-based product base. This does not mean that they don’t want sales from saving products rather they want to keep at least 30% of sales from savings products; 15-20% of revenue from health products; 30% from pension schemes and 20% of investment products.

· India First Life Insurance plans to launch three to four products during the next financial year and half of them will be Ulips. They may even launch Ulip-based pension products, (provided Irda liberalizes few of existing pension norms).

· 65% of company funds are invested in equities and remaining in debt.

· Currently, they have 1,200 employees and plan to add 300-400 staff during the next financial year.

· More than 95% of their sales come from bancassurance channels, which are operated through 3,000 branches of Bank of Baroda and Andhra Bank. They are eager to make their presence felt across all 5,000 branches of the two banks in coming three years.

· Their plans include reducing their dependence on bancassurance by two third in three years as well.

· IndiaFirst just launched its digital channel ‘LifeStore’ which is a do-it-yourself site that helps customers complete their insurance requirements online. They are even working towards making policy transactions possible over cell phones in near future.