Bajaj Allianz to expand, focus on rural areas

Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance, with close to 60 branches in Punjab (50 in rural areas and 10 in cities), is all set to open more branches in the state, a majority of which will come up in rural areas.

According to company officials, Bajaj Allianz wants to capture the rural market of the country because that's where about 70 per cent of the population live.

Speaking to Business Standard, Vishal Kapur, deputy area manager of Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance, said "Ours was the first private sector life insurance company which ventured into the rural market, in 2004. Our company has been held to be the top by the Insurance Regulatory Development Authority. We collected a business premium of Rs 2,715 crore "" a 0215 per cent growth over the previous year and out of that, rural areas constituted 50 per cent."

Some of these new branches will come up in Malerkotla in District Sangrur, Jagraon in District Ludhiana, Mukutsar and Mandi Dabwali.

"We already have two branches in Ludhiana and we will be opening one more branch here. All these branches will come up within one month's time. At present there are 14 private players in the field of life insurance and 13 of them are having offices in Ludhiana. So it's a neck-and-neck fight but in the end what matters is the winner.

"We want to target the rural market because a large number of the Indian population lives there. More branches in rural areas will also generate employment opportunities for people of that area. For those people, we are coming up with new policies in which even a person having a monthly income of Rs 3,000 can be insured," he said.

Kapur added that Bajaj Allianz has launched a complete set of need-based products to cater to each varied need of the customer.

"Currently we have a product portfolio of 26 products and more need-based products are in the pipeline," he said.