Nandini Goswami

Kolkata: It has always been a close game of numbers between the private sector insurance players. SBI Life,which would complete seven years in business on March 29, 2008, has pipped Bajaj Allianz in terms of first year premium collections in February. It raked in Rs 674 crore in the month as against Bajaj Allianz’ Rs 668.28 crore.

ICICI Prudential continued to top the private sector life insurance market, with first year premium income of Rs 972.32 crore in February.

Uday Shankar Roy, managing director and CEO, SBI Life, told DNA Money, “We have grown at a brisk pace of over 100% and received tremendous support from our branch network. Currently, almost 44% of our business comes from bancassurance -we are working on further State Bank of India linkages to take the share to 50%”.

While readying itself for an initial public offer in 2008-09, SBI Life is also planning to offer a basket of health insurance plans in the new fiscal.

“We are preparing for the public float, but the timing will have to be decided going by the recent upheavals in the market. We are progressing with an internal exercise to assess valuation benchmarks for ourselves,” Roy said.

The proposal of a holding company with the Reserve Bank of India seems to be on the backburner.

On growth and new plans in the new fiscal, Roy said, “We would like to continue with the same growth, although it may slow down a bit given the present economic scenario. Our recent products include Unit Plus Elite (a unit linked insurance plan), a high networth plan, a child plan and a micro insurance product.

We plan to devise health insurance plans since we are one of the few big companies which is not present in this segment”, the CEO added.

“With the low cost operating model of SBI and hence low upfront booking of operating expenses, the capital requirement of SBI Life will be relatively low when compared to other players in the industry,” analysts at Batlivala and Karani pointed out.

Kotak Institutional Securities, in a recent report, pointed out, “We see differences between Bajaj Allianz and SBI Life and other players reducing as their product portfolio becomes increasingly similar”.

Analysts at ICICI Securities said, “Similar to Bajaj Allianz, SBI Life has shifted its focus from credit and group insurance to unit- linked plans, where it has notched up a four-fold increase in premiums”.

Source : DNA