Bharti AXA Life Insurance starts India operations

Hyderabad, Aug 22: Planning to invest Rs 400 crore over the next three years, Bharti AXA Life Insurance Company Limited, a joint venture between the Bharti Enterprises and global insurance major AXA kicked off its Indian operations with the opening of its first branch office in Hyderabad today. IRDA Chairman, C S Rao inaugurated the branch and graced the occasion.

Speaking on the occasion, AXA Asia Pacific Holdings Limited Regional Chief Executive Mark Pearson said with an initial paid up capital of Rs 100 crore as per IRDA norms, the company introduced two unit linked products 'Future Confident' and 'Wealth Confident'.

Besides the metros and mini metros, it would be represented in the tier 2 and upcountry markets and also plans to roll out over 30 branches by December 2007. It will be supplemented with other points of presence through strategic partnerships, he added.

He said, this joint venture would leverage Bharti Airtel's well entrenched distribution capabilities and its large customer base of over 25 million and experience in telecom retail. And he also mentined that, with this JV, AXA would bring to the partnership their global insurance expertise, best practices, knowledge base and leadership skills in insurance and asset management with the intention to achieve market leadership. The joint venture will also utilise AXA's well established state-of-the-art business processing set up, AXA Business Service.

Mr Pearson said it would have a three-tier training programme and initially train 50 agents in Hyderabad. The second level training would take place at Mumbai at the JV's Corporate headquarters and the top level would be trained at AXA head office in France.

Bharti AXA Life Insurance CEO, Nitin Chopra said it would target the affluent and high networth individuals and would adopt a multi channel, multi product and a pan India approach. 'There will be no dearth of funds', and the investment of Rs 500 crore including the paid up capital is 'only an initial investment', he claimed.

UNI