Bank of Maharashtra signs agreement with ECGC

Pune, Apr 2 (UNI) Bank of Maharashtra (BoM) and Export Credit Guarantee Corporation of India (ECGC) today entered into an arrangement for distribution of export credit insurance.

The Bank will be the corporate agent of ECGC and will market export credit insurance products of ECGC through its branches.

The agreement was signed by BoM Chairman and Managing Director M D Mallya and ECGC Chairman and Managing Director A V Muralidharan.

Mr Muralidharan said ECGC will shortly start its services in the domestic credit insurance sector also whereby exporters can insure their domestic receivables and banks can protect their working capital finance granted against such receivables under separate covers proposed to be introduced.

ECGC is the fifth largest credit insurer of the world in terms of coverage of national exports and has been recognised as a specialised institution by Insurance Regulatory Development Authority operating exclusively in the field of credit insurance.

ECGC is widening its marketing channels through Bancassurance and brokers channels.

Mr Mallya said the Corporate Agency agreement with ECGC was one more step taken by the Bank for the benefit of exporter customers.

The Bank ventured into Bancassurance business with United India Insurance Company in May 2006 for general insurance and with LIC of India since July 2006 for life insurance products.

The Bank has also tied-up with leading Mutual Fund Asset Management Companies to distribute Mutual Fund products. It offers life insurance cover to the deposit account holders (Maha Suraksha) and home loan borrowers (Maha Grih Suraksha) and a health group insurance product (Mahaswasthya) in collaboration with LIC and United India Insurance Company respectively.

The new tie-up will provide insurance protection against payment risks under various types of ECGC policies at Bank's branches, resulting in customer convenience and consequently increasing Bank's fee based income.

Mr Mallya said that the Bank has during the last two years taken strategic initiatives such as upgrading its transaction processing technology to Core Banking Solution (CBS), ATM networking, MIS, DSS, expansion of Bank's branches and ATMs across the country to give it a pan India presence together with maintaining pace of growth in the top and bottom line of the Bank.

The business of Bank of Maharashtra has grown to over Rs 71,000 crore as on March 31.

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