Hyderabad: Aegon Religare Life Insurance, a joint venture between Netherlands-based life insurance and pension fund company Aegon and the Ranbaxy-promoters' company Religare, has launched the Aegon Religare Guaranteed Return Plan, a tax-free single premium policy.

"The scheme is an attractive long-term investment product, that provides the benefit of life cover-five times of the single premium paid," Aegon Religare's CEO Rajiv Jamkhedkar said.

Under this policy, the company is assuring a fixed annual compounded return of 7.2 per cent while at the highest tax bracket the guaranteed returns are equivalent to a pre-tax return of 10.9 per cent, Jamkhedkar said.

With a minimum subscription of Rs 50,000, the policy accepts single premium with a maximum cap of Rs 4 lakh. The plan is available in two maturities - 7 and 10 years. The insurance cover would be five times the premium paid. The new plan is close-ended and the firm will keep it open for subscriptions till 31 January 2009.

''We will deploy the proceeds only in the debt market. We have already acquired the assets for deployment and based on that we have decided to make the plan close-ended. The company is targeting individuals having cash with a long-term deployment plan.

"The policy guarantees tax-free returns along with life cover," Jamkhedkar said adding that the policy was available from December 2008 to January 2009.

Aegon Religare has sold about 8,000 policies so far and collected Rs11.5 crore in premium so far, ''Of the policies sold so far, about 70 per cent are in the Ulip category while the remaining are term policies,'' Jamkhedkar said. The company is targeting to achieve a premium turnover of Rs 100 crore for the full year of operation. The company commenced operations in August 2008.

Aegon Religare is also planning an aggressive foray into rural markets. The company is on the verge of launching three more policies targeting the rural sector, pension and health sector before March 2009, Jamkhedkar said.

The company has received approval from the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority for a new rural insurance product that would be launched shortly.

Jamkhedkar said the company will sell the product in select areas to begin with before marketing it with a 'full-fledged strategy.' He said that it was not a micro-insurance product, but, has been designed to suit the rural markets. The company is also finalising formalities to launch pension and health insurance products by March 2009.

The company currently has an equity base of Rs250 crore and would infuse another Rs 120 crore as the new products are rolled out and sold. The company, which started marketing activities in August 2008, is targeting a business of Rs100 crore in the first full-year operations.