Indian bank in talks with LIC to launch rural insurance

The Indian Bank is in talks with the Life Insurance Corporation of India to develop a low cost insurance product for the rural masses.

On the sidelines of launching the National Project for Financial Inclusion (NPFI) at Pasur village here, K C Chakrabarty, chairman and managing director, Indian Bank, said that a large number of rural population have not yet been covered by insurance as the cost of premium is high and beyond their reach.

"We have been working for coming up with a cheaper and affordable insurance product for the rural people," he added.

The product would be sold by the bank through its 673 rural branches.

Chakrabarty said that almost 80 per cent of the population did not have any access to banking services. To bring the non-banking population under the fold of banks, the Reserve Bank of India launched the NPFI during December 2005, he added.

As a first step, Mangalam village, in the union territory of Pondicherry, was covered under the project, followed by Pasur village in Coimbatore district in Tamil Nadu.

The bank has planned to cover all the villages in Pondicherry by mid - March, he added.