Max Life Insurance, one of India's leading life insurance company, and old generation private sector bank Lakshmi Vilas Bank have forged a 5 year strategic alliance for bancassurance to distribute life insurance products through the bank's 400 branches.
The two have signed a contract, as per which Lakshmi Vilas Bank has become a corporate agent for Max Life Insurance and will offer a complete bouquet of life insurance solutions and post sales services to its customers.
The tie up will help Max Life Insurance reach out to an additional 25 lakh customers of the Chennai headquartered bank and strengthen its multi-channel distribution channel, primarily in the southern part of India, where Lakshmi Vilas Bank has a strong presence. Currently, over 20% of the new business for Max Life comes from South India. Of the total 400 branches of Lakshmi Vilas Bank, as many as 320 are located in South India.
Lakshmi Vilas Bank, which started distributing financial products from FY2002-03 to increase its fee-based income, is looking at the alliance to enhance the insurance product bouquet.
Rakesh Sharma, managing director & CEO at Lakshmi Vilas Bank said, ''We are happy to tie up with Max Life Insurance as we see this as complementary relationship where we can leverage on each other's strong point to reach out to customers. Max Life Insurance has a history of long standing partnerships so going forward, we want to grow together. The vision of the bank is that we increase our foot print in retail loan and CASA in next few years, and increase the FEE income by adding large Wealth Portfolio. The insurance solut ions that Max Life provides are synergistic to the banking solutions we offer. We also want to extend life insurance solutions to NRIs who are currently using our money transfer services.''
Shares of the company gained Rs 0.9, or 0.93%, to trade at Rs 97.55. The total volume of shares traded was 7,026 at the BSE (1.38 p.m., Monday).