BoI plans to venture in life insurance business

Mumbai, July 26: The Bank of India has announced its plans to enter life insurance business as a joint venture (JV) with the Dia-chi Mutual Life Insurance Company, and Andhra Bank as the third JV partner.

Bank's CMD M Balachandran said this while announcing their first quarterly results. However, he refused to specify any formal announcement date in this connection.

Currently, the bank is selling the life insurance products of ICICI Prudential through all its branches and a chain of 10 rural regional banks (RRBs) being sponsored by the Bank of India.

Besides, the bank has introduced life insurance cover for star home loan borrowers, for loan protection on an optional basis.

Also, he claimed that the bank's low cost deposits grew by 24.6 per cent during whereas its share of low cost deposits improved to 41.7 per cent from 39.96 per cent in June last year. He attributed it to the various factors like Diamond Plus saving deposits, emphasis on online transaction, core banking and others.

On the results of the bank for the quarter ended June this year, which were adopted by its bank of directors at its meeting held here today, Mr Balachandran said that the net profit improved to Rs 209 crore from Rs 172 crore during the same period last year, thus registering a growth of 21.5 per cent.

Similarly, operating profit of the abnk increased to Rs 468 crore from Rs 367 crore during the same period last year, which shows a growth of 27.6 per cent, he said. Gross NPA ratio declined to 3.61 per cent from 5.37 per cent in June last year.

Thanks to various measures taken by the bank in the form of introduction of fast remittance service at Singapore for NRI making use of the RTGS/CBS/MBB systems in India and other initiatives, the global deposits of the bank grew by Rs 15,322 crore or 19 per cent in June over the same period last year, he said. Encouraged by it, the bank is expanding its activities overseas by upgrading its existing network at Shenzen (China), as well as opening new representative offices in countries like Doha and South Africa in near future, he added.

UNI