HDFC's life insurance, mutual fund arms to start operations from Gift City

HDFC Life – the insurance arm of HDFC Bank, on Thursday announced that the overseas branch of its international subsidiary HDFC International Life and Re, will now offer US Dollar denominated life and health insurance solutions for Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) from GIFT City – IFSC, under the brand name HDFC Life International.

HDFC Life International will cater to NRIs and the global Indian diaspora, and the products Savings, Health and Retirement.

The first product – “US Dollar Global Education Plan”, is now open for enrollment and is designed to help parents build a US Dollar denominated corpus to meet future expenses for their child’s overseas education. This product aims to eliminate any future mismatch between the currency of investment and the currency of expenses, HDFC Life International said.

The asset management arm, HDFC AMC also announced the set-up of its wholly owned subsidiary HDFC AMC International (IFSC) Limited at IFSC.

In the initial phase, HDFC AMC International (IFSC) proposes to introduce 6 (six) Funds which will feed into various HDFC Mutual Fund schemes across equity and hybrid. The underlying domestic schemes for these strategies have an aggregate average AUM in excess of $20 billion (as of July 2023). Going forward, the company intends to expand its offering to both onshore investors (under LRS/OPI route) and offshore investors to invest in global strategies.

Speaking on the occasion, Deepak Parekh, Chairman, HDFC Life and HDFC AMC, said, “For the insurance and asset management business in particular, a presence in the Gift City is extremely beneficial especially since penetration levels remain so low in both these sectors.”

Pareksh said, life insurance penetration is just 3.2% of GDP in India, compared to the global average  of 7%.

“Similarly, the penetration of mutual funds in India is 17% of GDP, while the world average is 80% of GDP.  So we do have a long way to go, but I am confident that Gift City will enable the country to facilitate the development of a strong base of international financial services in the country,” he said adding the 3 group entities – the bank, the life insurance company and asset management company each have a presence in Gift City.