Tamilnad Mercantile Bank Ltd, in tie up with United India Insurance Company Ltd, has launched a cobranded family healthcare product, to offer customised health insurance policy for the bank's customers.
“The cost of healthcare is going to increase rapidly in the coming years and insurance is a requirement to meet the cost of healthcare for each individual. The cobranded product will give our customers a fine risk coverage at a low premium,” said said KB Nagendra Murthy, managing director and CEO of the bank, while launching the product.
TMB had entered into an agreement with United India Insurance Company in 2010 to act as a bancassurance partner and has been marketing various products of the latter through its 288 branches. The bank expects to sell the policy to around 50,000 customers in the current fiscal, he added.
The demand for health insurance is growing and the penetration of such schemes is low, said G Srinivasan, chairman and managing director of United India Insurance.
“Only 15 per cent of the population is covered under insurance and around nine per cent of it is through various central and state government schemes. Excluding the government schemes, hardly 5-6 per cent of the population has insurance coverage,” he said.
The company has prepared a customised product for the customers of TMB.
The insurance company expects its premium income to grow from last year's Rs 8,200 crore to around Rs 10,000 crore by end of this fiscal and "to add another 300 offices in next three months in class III, IV cities as part of financial inclusion," he said. It currently has around 1500 offices across the country.
TMB, which posted a total business of around Rs 31,034 crore last fiscal, expects around Rs 40,200 crore by the end of the current fiscal.
Net profit, which was Rs 313.46 crore during 2011-12, is expected to grow to Rs 400 crore and the total network would grow from 288 branches to 330 branches during the period, said the company officials.
