Tata AIA Life partners with Citibank to offer insurance through bank channel

The bank's 44 branches will be selling points for the nine bouquet products, apart from its website

Private life insurance company Tata AIA Life has entered into a bancassurance partnership with Citibank to offer its products through the bank channel.

A total of nine products would be sold through this channel, including 4 Unit-Linked Plans, one term plan, two non-participatory traditional and two participatory traditional products.

Naveen Tahilyani, CEO & Managing Director, Tata AIA Life explained that through this partnership, they aimed to reach several more customers through not just the bank branches but through its digital presence as well. "We will not sell insurance products but insurance solutions through the tie-up with Citibank," he said.

He added that they would add 15 products in the next six months to this portfolio. Further, about 70 people from Tata AIA would work with Citi for the bancassurance partnership.

Tata AIA is planning to improve its persistency to 80 per cent with additional emphasis on second and third year of persistency, said Tahilyani. They are also planning to use Citibank's ATM network in the future to sell their products.

The insurance company will offer tailor-made solutions and custom designed underwriting limits and processes for policyholders. Kartik Kaushik, Country Business Manager, Consumer Banking, Citibank India added their average ticket-size was not only higher, their persistency rates were also high.

In India, for every Rs 100 needed for a family's income protection, only Rs 7.40 is currently provided for, leaving a protection gap of 92.6 percent. The protection gap compares the life insurance cover and savings consumers have to what they should have.

At present, bancassurance follows the corporate agency model wherein a bank can only tie-up with one life, one non-life and one standalone health insurer to sell their products.

The long-term bancassurance partnership in India will address this market opportunity by providing a suite of traditional and unit-linked insurance products that offer wealth management, life protection, saving and retirement solutions.

Kaushik added that the partnership with Tata AIA Life aims to fulfil these very unique needs of our customers with a first-of-its-kind tablet application that integrates the online-offline delivery process impeccably."

The tablet application is a paperless, automated sales interaction process that converts the cumbersome process, requiring 30-plus physical signatures per insurance policy, into a simple sign-on process.

The unified integration of the online-offline sales process provides real-time instant servicing options at Citibank branches, including the provision of tax receipts and fund value statements, along with servicing other frequent requests of customers.

This relationship in India is an outcome of AIA Group Limited ("AIA"), one of the two joint venture partners in Tata AIA Life Insurance and, Citibank N.A. ("Citibank") reaching an agreement on an exclusive Bancassurance partnership across 11 markets in the Asia-Pacific region, namely India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, China, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Australia and Korea.