Micro Finance Matters-JANUARY 2011 - Sa-Dhan

Syndicate Bank, Tata AIG launch
micro-insurance scheme
Anjana Chandramouly
The Hindu Business line, 28 January 2011
Bangalore
All that Gowramma from Mayasandra
village near Bangalore had to do for
buying an insurance cover of Rs 25,000
was to get herself a bank account and set aside Rs
33.09 — for a whole year — from her kitty. At a
little over 10 paise for Rs 1,000 a day, the microinsurance
product is something that's well within
her reach.
As part of its financial inclusion initiative,
Syndicate Bank has tied up with private insurer
Tata AIG Life Insurance to launch its microinsurance
scheme. “Along with our bank
products such as savings bank account, deposits
and loan products, we thought it better to have a
micro-insurance product which would go a long
way for residents of villages, those with lower
income and cannot afford to pay higher premium
for life insurance cover,” said Mr Ravi Chatterjee,
Executive Director, Syndicate Bank, while
launching the product.
Insurance cover
The insurance product will offer both life and
accident cover. According to him, the bank has a
large network of branches in Karnataka, Andhra
Pradesh and the national capital region (NCR),
and “we will focus on these three areas for this
product,” he said. The bank was also planning to
come out with new products and the same
product with different amount of cover,
depending on the demand for this microinsurance
product and those staying the
commanding areas of these villages.
Mr M. Anand, Senior Vice-President and Head
– Alternate Channels, Tate AIG Life Insurance,
told Business Line that his company was in
talks with other banks for financial inclusion.
“It could be the same product too. Product
development is going on now, and it will take a
couple of months for us to come out with new
products,” he said.
Through this relationship with Syndicate Bank,
the insurer plans to cover five lakh lives by
2012. Syndicate Bank has been allotted 750
villages in the first phase and “we would work
with business correspondents and branches to
reach out to these villages,” said Mr Anand. The
bank has been allotted a total of 1,493 villages
with a population of over 2,000 to be covered
before March 2012, and has so far opened 3.5
lakh no-frill accounts.
Pricing
On the pricing, he said that it was “affordable
since it is a group product.” He added, “We see
this as a starting point to go bottom up and reach
out to a larger mass, and this is the first-of-itskind
product that we are getting into in this
space.”
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