IDBI Fortis scores fastest century, heads for another

• Collects premium of Rs 100 crore in record five months
• On aggressive 100-branch roll out

MUMBAI, September 09, 2008: IDBI Fortis Life Insurance began its operations with a big bang by collecting premium of over Rs 100 crore within a record time of five months, thus becoming the fastest growing new life insurance company in the private sector. The company has issued 25,240 policies with collected premium of Rs 105.3 crore and sum insured of Rs 827 crore, as on August 31, 2008.
“I am glad to report that we have scored the fastest century,” said Mr G.V. Nageswara Rao, MD & CEO, IDBI Fortis Life Insurance Co Ltd, using a cricket metaphor. “We are heading for another century as we embarked on an aggressive network expansion to open as many as 100 branches during the current fiscal,” he said addressing the media here.
The company has already completed setting up of over 30 branches so far and the remaining are being launched at regular intervals at a rapid pace to meet not only its business needs but to cater to the local requirements.
IDBI Fortis Life Insurance is a recently launched joint-venture of IDBI Bank Ltd., India’s premier development and commercial bank, Federal Bank, one of India’s leading private sector banks and Fortis, Europe’s banking and insurance giant. The Fortis Group is headquartered in Belgium and the Netherlands.
 “With changing lifestyles, more and more people want to invest their money for long term wealth building. We have been targeting this segment with our unique wealth-building products that will help their investments grow by protecting it from unforeseen circumstances and we are happy that the product is being received well,” Mr Rao explained.
 The company has begun operations in March this year, leading with their innovative product ‘Wealthsurance’. WealthsuranceTM is a first of its kind combination of comprehensive investment choices, protected by powerful insurance options, all presented with a reasonable charge structure, making it a one stop solution to a customer’s wealth building plans. WealthsuranceTM offers investment choices such as Guaranteed Return Fund, Capital Guaranteed Fund, Monthly Interest Account, Equity Funds, Debt Funds etc. ensuring that the customer would find all his investment requirements satisfied with this one powerful product. The powerful insurance benefits of WealthsuranceTM ensure that a customer’s wealth plan is not affected by unforeseen events that may strike them.
Mr Filip Coremans, CFO, IDBI Fortis Life Insurance Co Ltd, said: “It is exciting for Fortis to be in one of the fastest growing insurance markets in the world. The focus is now to expand our tied agency network to cater to this huge country with so many different languages and dialects, in addition to our wide bancassurance networks with IDBI Bank and Federal Bank.”