Chennai: Life insurer PNB MetLife India Insurance Company Ltd. will soon bundle and sell the products of Religare Health Insurance with its life insurance policy, said a senior official of the life insurer. He also said that PNB MetLife is targeting about 18-20 per cent growth in topline this fiscal and nearly double the branch network to about 200 in two years time.

"We have tied up with Religare Health Insurance whereby we can offer health insurance along with our life insurance policy as one package. Initially the plan is to bundle the health insurance policy with our term insurance policy. We will launch the package policy this December," Sameer Bansal, Chief Distribution Officer, PNB MetLife told reporters here on Thursday.

He said the tie up will offer additional earning opportunity for the life insurer's distribution channel partners. According to him, life insurers cannot offer a reimbursable health insurance product. "We have identified 50 cities which have good potential for life insurance and expand our branch network there. We will increase our branch network to 200 in two years' time from the current 107 branches," Bansal said.

He said the company gets nearly 65 per cent of its business from bancassurance partnerships with Punjab National Bank, Karnataka Bank, Jammu and Kashmir Bank and others and the balance from individual agents and direct sales force. He said the company's policy renewal ratio is about 78 per cent and the plan is to take it to 81 per cent.

Queried about the blended average premium per policy he said it is about Rs 40,000 - Rs 45,000. With Tamil Nadu accounting for eight per cent of the total life insurance premium in the country, PNB MetLife plans additional focus on the market.

Currently the life insurer gets about three per cent of its premium from Tamil Nadu. Bansal said last fiscal the company closed with a total premium of about Rs 4,000 crore and the current year it will log around 18-20 per cent business growth.

Source: Odisha TV