Chennai: After buying out the Chennai- based life insurer, AMP Sanmar Life Insurance Company Limited, for an undisclosed sum, Anil Ambani's ADAE (Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Enterprises) is raring to go all out into the market.

As a first step, an application has been filed for changing the name of the company to Reliance Life Insurance. Its new CEO, P Nandagopal, poached from Birla Sun Life Insurance Company Limited, has been hired, who spends his time shuttling between Mumbai and Chennai to reach out to employees with the new owner's vision and goal.

While financial target numbers are not known and strategies are in the process of being drawn, what is being made loud and clear to the employees is that the pace of topline growth should be accelerated. According to reports, the target is to have one million customers by the end of 2006.

Reaching this ambitious target would require a multi-pronged approach. The two main prongs aredesigning new products and beefing up the distribution. The company has hired a new actuary who will replace Mike Wood, the current appointed actuary as soon as he quits AMP Sanmar.

With a presence in six states, Reliance Life wants a pan India presence and also multiple distribution partners. This means, the company will open more branches and also actively covet corporate agents, banks and others. Incidentally, it was Nandagopal who first implemented the successful bancassurance model in India, while he was senior vice president, alternate channels with Birla Sun Life.

While there is no sign of employees being purged, some operations like investments, actuarial and finance will be shifted to Mumbai in the future. According to sources, employees are still insecure as a new future path is in the process of unfolding.

In the market, AMP Sanmar is faring quite well with the ownership issues having been cleared. In August 2005, the company booked a new premium of Rs12.5 crore.

For Nandagopal, a B Com and MBA from Andhra University, and a Fellow of the Insurance Institute of India, it is going to be a challenging assignment. After selling large policies at Birla Sun Life effortlessly, he is expected to replicate the same. He has to increase the premium averages per policy from four figure numbers to five figures.