ING Vysya Insurance may rope in UCBs to widen reach

ING Vysya Life Insurance Company is planning to rope in major urban co-operative banks (UCBs) as bancassurance partners to widen its distribution network across the country.

ING Vysya Life is a joint venture between ING Insurance International BV and ING Vysya Bank.

The company, which has presence in 20 cities including five metros, will add 10 more cities to its network with strengthening its manpower across the country. The spread plan will give special emphasis to western India.

Yvo Metzelaar, managing director and chief executive officer, ING Vysya Life, said, "Though with our existing partners Bharat Overseas Bank and Vysya Bank we are generating good business, we have decided to choose major UCBs as bancassurance partners. Since January 1 we have started working with two UCBs in Mumbai on an experimental basis. Now we are planning to adopt this model seriously in other states where co-operative banks have a better reach than nationalised banks. Through this tie-ups we will be able to capture a major share of the semi-rural and the rural markets of India."

At present ING Vysya sells its insurance policies through the branches of Bharat Overseas Bank and Vysya Bank.

Though Vysya Bank has a strong branch network in southern India, it lacks an extensive network in other regions.

Metzelaar denied to divulge the names of the two UCBs with which his company has tied up in Mumbai.

"As we entered the Indian insurance sector late, our first focus is to reach out to people and the co-operative banks. There are around 300 UCBs in Gujarat alone with good penetration. This will help us to generate good business. We will try to identify the best UCBs in the states because of the crisis in the co-operative sector, and then work out the deal with them," said Metzelaar.

ING Vysya, which started operations in India during September 2001, has crossed the Rs 1,000-crore sum assured mark. It is looking at a premium income in excess of Rs 200 crore for the current calendar year.

"During this calendar year, we are going to open new branches in 10 cities and also planning to recruit 10,000 insurance advisors. Our present insurance advisor strength is at 3,000. During the year we will focus more on smaller cities such as Vadodara, Surat and Rajkot in Gujarat or Aurangabad and Nashik in Maharashtra. In the eastern part, we will extend our network outside Kolkata also during 2004," he said.

Currently, ING Vysya operates from cities such as Pune, Kochi, Nagpur, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Vizag, Vijaywada, Mangalore, Mysore, Jaipur and Ahmedabad among non-metro cities.