Edelweiss Tokio Life Insurance, the latest entrant in the private life insurance space with a start-up capital of INR 550 crores, plans to break-even early by focusing on efficiency and productivity of the agents.
The company started operations last month and has already started selling life insurance products through 30 branches. With its regional rollout from Gujarat, Edelweiss Tokio Life Insurance is planning to open 33 new branches at select locations across the country, including 14 in Maharashtra, by December 2012. They recently opened a branch in Nashik.
Edelweiss Tokio Life Insurance is a joint venture between Edelweiss, one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies, and Tokio Marine, one of the fastest growing Life Insurance companies in Japan. Deepak Mittal has been appointed as the Company’s Managing Director and CEO. Edelweiss Financial Services, founded by Rashesh Shah and Venkat Ramaswami has an existing customer base. Edelweiss Tokio Life is planning to cross-sell their life insurance products to this base.
Rashesh Shah, Chairman, Edelweiss Group said, “We have an initial capital of Rs 550 crore. The two partners will infuse a total of Rs 1,100 crore into the business in 6 years before the breakeven. We are happy to start operations after the regulator brought in changes. Now, unlike the early entrants we will not spend on opening 1000 branches and then closing them. Initially we plan to hire 3,000 agents.”
Shuzo Sumi, President and CEO of Tokio Marine said, “We want to cover 10 million lives by 2015. We want to have a market share of 1.5% by then. Our focus is primarily on agency and we plan to invest in training the agency force.”
The company has introduced new life insurance products like ‘Edelweiss Tokio Life – Wealth Accumulation’, a ULIP, in three different variants Cover Plus, Comprehensive Cover, Accelerated Cover. Apart from this, the company has launched ‘Edelweiss Tokio Life-Education’ which is a non-participating guaranteed endowment plan, ‘Edelweiss Tokio Life-Protection’ which is a pure term plan, and ‘Edelweiss Tokio Life – Income Replacement’ which is a non-linked, non-participating life insurance plan.
