IndusInd Bank plans to market life, non-life insurance products

By Our Banking Bureau | 10 Apr 2003

Hyderabad: IndusInd Bank has plans to take up distribution of insurance products, both life and non-life, among others special products.

Addressing newspersons here on the eve of announcing the ISO-9001:2000 certification bagged by the bank, IndusInd Bank senior vice-president Sharukh Wadia said the bank is currently in the process of finalising the tie-ups with life and non-life insurance players for the distribution of insurance products through the bank’s branches.

“We have short-listed a couple of institutions and hope to finalise the players by end-June 2003. We expect to commence the operations of distributing insurance products by September 2003,” Wadia said.

The bank, which recently took up retail banking from the traditional focus on wholesale banking, is also planning to introduce several tailor-made products for the high net-worth individuals and corporates. Prominent among these are interest rate swapping and derivatives.

The bank has also chalked out aggressive plans for the expansion of its network, both branches and automated teller machines (ATMs). “We have already expanded our network and increased outlets to 126 from 77 last year, showing a marked increase of 63 per cent. We plan to increase our branch network to around 100 by the fiscal-end from the existing level of 53 branches. The total outlets may reach 250 by the fiscal-end from the current level of 126,” Wadia said.