SBI life plans overseas foray

News Flash

Banks increasingly willing to lend to quality franchises
Fiscal measures to enable driving consumer demand
Banks remained cautious on lending in H2'CY08
Expect liquidity situation to improve going further
Significant correction in interest rates going ahead
UBS cuts HCL Tech price target to Rs.120 vs Rs.160
UBS maintains 'SELL' rating on HCL Tech
UBS upgrades Idea Cellular to 'BUY'; target at Rs.100/sh
UBS upgrades Bharti Airtel to 'BUY'; target Rs.1000/sh
Difficult to sustain the current liquidity driven rally
Slowdown in earnings still remains the key concern
Difficult to sustain current rally in global equity
See huge slowdown in eco growth in next 2-3 months
Credit Suisse cuts RIL target by 24% to Rs.1504/share
Crude trading lower, trading around $48/bbls
Wall St ends muted for second consecutive session
Russell 2000 Index of small caps up 1.9%
Dow Jones & S&P500 up over 0.5% each
Madoff sons reported jewellery violations to U.S.
To seek $2.5bn worth damages from Kuwait for breaking deal
ISM Non Manufacturing Index at 40.6
Pending Home Sales Index down 4% to 82.3
Factory sales fell 5.3% in Nov, biggest drop on record
High price to affect 3G bids: Sunil Mittal
Not desperate to enter 3G: Akhil Gupta
Oil officers strike not to affect ONGC, Oil India output
PSU oil officers strike not to hit ops of most refiners
Crude futures higher; breaches $50/bbl in day trade
Urgent OPEC meeting to take place in Kuwait, in Feb
IL&FS Trust: Sold 24.52 million shares (3.6%) since Dec-23

Updated: 19/08/2008 | 06:22 PM IST

Top Stories

Press Trust of India

Tuesday, August 19, 2008 (Chandigarh)

Blog

Comments:

Read (0)

Post

Rate the story

Riding high on the strong brand identity of State Bank of India, SBI Life Insurance is now looking to foray into overseas market next year by targeting Indian expatriates in the Middle East countries for selling insurance products.

"We have plans to enter Middle East countries as there is a huge potential for life insurance business here because of the large presence of the Indian expatriates. Moreover, SBI has a strong brand identity which will also help us.(to penetrate there)," SBI Life Insurance Managing Director and CEO US Roy said in Chandigarh on Tuesday.

Stating that the company is still in negotiation with concerned authorities for overseas foray, he said it hopes to start operations in 2009-10.

However, he said the company has still not decided on the distribution model for marketing products in the overseas market.

SBI Life Insurance, a 74:26 joint venture between SBI and BNP Paribas Assurance, has targeted to achieve over 70 per cent growth in new premium income at Rs 8,500 crore in 2008-09 against collection of Rs 4,800 crore in last fiscal. The company is also looking to achieve over Rs 10,000 crore of total premium income in this fiscal against Rs 5,622 crore in 2007-08.

The company has plans to open 250 new branches this year, besides doubling the headcount of insurance advisors in 2008-09. Presently it has 180 branches and 43,000 agents.

However, he said the company would not go for any fresh capital infusion this year because of healthy solvency ratio of 2.2 per cent with paid up capital of Rs 1,000 crore. Last year, it invested Rs 600 crore on expansion purposes.