SBI Life Insurance Company Ltd, a joint venture between the State Bank of India (SBI) and BNP Paribas Cardif S A, is eyeing 35-40 per cent growth in the new business premium collection in this fiscal.
In FY17, the company mopped up new business premium of about Rs 10,200 crore. Total premium collection by the insurer in last fiscal was about Rs 21,000 crore.
"In the current fiscal, we have made our strategies firm for growth in new business premium. The growth would be primarily driven by bancassurance channel that would grow 52 per cent. Plus, we also expect good growth in the agency channel- which is expected to grow by 32 per cent", said Sanjeev Pujari, president (actuarial & risk), SBI Life Insurance Company Ltd.
The company's bancassurance channel has been growing by 40 per cent year-on-year over the last three years. "We operate through multiple channels but we have seen very strong growth in our bancassurance channel in the last three years. The driver has been SBI's network of more than 24,000 branches. We are selling policies through all these branches", he said.
In terms of new business premium, SBI Life has a market share of 20 per cent (as on March 31, 2017) among the private sector entities. Its overall share in total business premium in life insurance space stands at six per cent where Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) is the market leader. SBI Life has been operating in life insurance business since 2000-01.
In April-June quarter, SBI Life's new business premium has grown by 38 per cent.
SBI Life Insurance proposes to open an initial public offering (IPO) of up to 120 million equity shares of face value of Rs 10 each, on Wednesday. This includes 80 million shares by SBI and up to 40 million equity shares by BNP Paribas Cardif SA. SBI Life expects to mop up Rs 8,400 crore from the IPO proceeds.