ICICI Prudential launches insurance operations in Delhi

ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, a joint venture between the UK-based Prudential plc and India's leading financial institution ICICI, became the first private sector insurance player to kick off operations in New Delhi, when it launched a set of five insurance products.

The company had earlier commenced its operations in Mumbai in December by issuing the first set of policies to underprivileged children.

The company has already launched ICICI Pru Single Premium Bond, ICICI Pru Save'n' Protect and ICICI Pru Forever Life products which are offered with some innovative features and flexible riders. The current range of riders are comprehensive and cover health, disability, accident etc giving the consumers a great degree freedom to value add to his basic policy. In addition to its three existing products, the company is introducing two new products to coincide the launch of its New Delhi operations.

The two products – ICICI Pru CashBak and ICICI Pru LifeGuard are anticipated endowment and level term assurance products respectively. While ICICI Pru LifeGuard is the classical low-cost pure protection product ideal for Indian consumers, ICICI Pru CashBak is a three-in-one flexible plan that combines savings, liquidity and protection.

Ms. Shikha Sharma, managing director of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance said, "With the blend of ICICI's local market expertise and entrepreneurship and Prudential's unrivalled global experience in the life insurance business, we are hopeful of playing a major role in the expanding the life insurance market in this country".

The distribution system is geared up to launch operations in Delhi with 370 odd insurance advisors expected to be in place within the next 10 days. Besides the mandatory IRDA specified training the company is investing in in-house training inputs to enable them to offer a superior quality of advice to our customers in the form of need based selling.

"The initial response in Mumbai has been encouraging and there has been a lot of interest and inquiries amongst prospective customers. This indicates the expectations and confidence of the people about our company", Ms Sharma added.

ICICI Prudential Life Insurance will extend its operations in a phased manner across key cities as
well as selected rural areas within the next few months.