Private life insurance company Canara HSBC OBC Life Insurance is looking to clock a 50-60 percent growth in its new premium for the financial year 2017-18. The insurer, which is a joint venture between Canara Bank, HSBC and Oriental Bank of Commerce, gets majority of its business from the banking partners.
In an interaction with Moneycontrol, Shalabh Saxena, Chief Operating Officer, Canara HSBC OBC Life Insurance said that they want to deepen their penetration in the tier 2 and 3 regions. "While our bank partners have 10,000 branches, we have penetrated only 1 percent of that," he added.
The company has integrated its systems with the bank branches and Saxena said that their target was to reach 1 million customers by 2020. The insurer is at half of that currently.
They have also introduced services on social media where the company can be contacted on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to fulfill servicing needs.
A few days ago, the insurer launched a new service wherein any individual could fulfill their service requests through a video chat on their website. Going forward, Saxena said that the service could become a revenue centre. If a customer is satisfied with the company, they would come back for a repeat purchase.
The repeat purchases currently are at 20 percent which the insurer plans to take to 30 percent in the near future. "We are also looking to increase our business from the direct channel to 5 percent and see it forming 10-15 percent of our business in the next three years. This is because products like unit-linked insurance are finding favour with customers online," said Saxena.
Currently, traditional products constitute 55 percent of the product portfolio of the company. In the near future, the company is also planning to launch a health product that will operate in the critical illness space.
This is the only company without any individual agents selling their products. Saxena said that they will stick to this strategy, while also trying to tie up with additional bank partners.
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