Canara HSBC Life sees 50% growth in eastern region business

Canara HSBC Oriental Bank Life Insurance is expecting its business in the eastern region to grow by 50 per cent this fiscal.
"In the current fiscal, we expect business to grow at 50 per cent in the eastern region, while we are expecting to end the year with a growth of 25-30 per cent in retail business for the company," company's Chief Financial Officer Gaurav Seth said here today.
Till January this year, the new premium for individual was Rs 322 crore as against Rs 248 crore in the same period last year.
He said the company's focus was to deliver wider insurance penetration in West Bengal with 377 bank branches and 141 in the Northeast.

Asked whether the company has any plans to exploit other than bancassurance channel for doing business, Seth said that "currently, we have capability to tap only one per cent of the bank account holders of promoter banks."
"Once this penetration goes up to 5-7 per cent, then we will explore other channels. Bancassurance is a proven cost effective channel of distribution and we want to focus on this now," he added.
In 2014-15, company's net profit was Rs 107 crore and in the current fiscal it is expected to grow by 10-15 per cent, the CFO said.