STEP AHEAD: India First Life completes three years

Ludhiana,16 November, 2012: India First Life Insurance, a joint venture between two of India’s largest public sector banks - Bank of Baroda and Andhra Bank along with UK’s leading risk, wealth and investment company Legal &General, has total assets under management at Rs 3,000 crore as it completed three successful years of operations today. It saw a year-on-year growth of over 39% during financial year 2011-12 and garnered Rs.1.000 crore of business at the end of March 31, 2012, moving to the 10^th position amongst private life insurers.

With a share capital of Rs. 475 crores, India First is today present in over 1000cities and towns across the country through 5000-plus partner bank branches. Having launched its operations on November 16, 2009, the company has successfully differentiated itself through simple, easy to understand products that are fairly priced and efficiently serviced.

According to Dr. P. Nandagopal, Managing Director and CEO, India First Life Insurance, “We have come a long way and have successfully positioned ourselves as a customer-focused and innovative player in the life insurance sector in a short span of time. We have continuously strived to make our approach and our products customer oriented and that has helped us perform well on a sustainable basis”.

He further added, “We have focused on the Banc assurance model leveraging the existing branch network of our promoter banks across the country. Our unique combination of domain expertise, customer knowledge, product innovation and nationwide reach has helped us cover over 1.6million lives till 31st March, 2012.”

The company has seen an appreciable growth of 39% at the end of March 2012; while capping its operating expenses at 19% of new business premium.

The company’s product range covers the typical needs of protection (term insurance), savings, education, and health. It also provides a wide range of group insurance products ranging from credit life, term and employee liability. All the products are designed keeping in mind the specifications and requirement of Indian customers belonging to different economical strata.

 “While we are celebrating the success of the past 3 years, we are exploring newer opportunities for ensuring sustained growth and superior value to our customers. We are looking at a 10-20% year-on-year growth over the next2-3 years. We will further strengthen our presence across health, pension and micro insurance segments” added Dr. Nandagopal.

 India First was awarded the ISO 9001:2008 certification within 7 months of operations. The company’s belief in the power of thinking new and always keeping customers as first priority has earned the company a number of recognitions and awards during its journey towards completing 3 glorious years. India First has been awarded with Company of the Year Award – Life Insurance at The Indian Insurance Awards, 2012. It has also won the prestigious Celent Model Insurer Award (Asia), 2012 and the CIO 100 Award (India Edition), 2011.