ING to double life branches in India by Finance News Bulletin

Published: 14/11/06

ING is preparation to more than double its life assurance twigs in India by the end of next year as overseas financial groups in the country seek to overcome restrictions on banking operations by expanding other business linesThe Netherlands-based monetary services group said it would carry the number of its life assurance branches to 320 from 142 now employees numbers would increase to about 5,000 from 3,000, it said“Life has grown 100 per cent over the past two natural life

We would expect it to carry on growing at the same rate,” said Kshitij Jain, the chief decision-making officer of ING Vysya Life Insurance, the group’s Indian existence businessIndia only deregulated its cover industry in 1999 This allowed the private sector and foreign companies, through joint ventures with Indian companies, to confront the country’s twin state-owned monopolies: the existence Insurance Corporation of India and the General cover Corporation of India, which provided non-life productsIn the history six years, the government has licensed at least 22 novel private Indian insurance companies, many of which have a foreign associate

Aside from ING, foreign insurers in India include the UK’s Prudential and Canada’s Sun existenceING owns 26 per cent of Vysya Life as well as 44 per cent of ING Vysya Bank and an asset management armIt acquired its bet in the bank ahead of system limiting foreign investors to 10 per cent stakes in local banks and has one of the main foreign-invested bank branch networks with more than 490 outletsHowever, the have an account is still subject to government limits on new bough numbers

Consequently it has tried to boost income through greater efficiencies and offering new products“We would seem very seriously at increasing our [Indian bank] bough network as and when required and allowed by the system,” said Michel Tilmant, ING group chairmanMr Tilmant also left open the possibility of increasing through acquisitions, including in fund managementStandard Chartered Bank, the UK emerging markets collection, is bearing in mind selling its funds management unit

The announcement comes even as others, such as praise Suisse, Fidelity and Franklin Templeton, are about to enter or are thinking about increasing their presence in the marketThe Standard Chartered component has assets under management of about Rs155bn (US$33bn) The 30 joint funds operating in the state had assets of Rs3,070bn as of August

The private division in India accounts for about 20 per cent of the existence assurance market and has an 11 per cent share of the market in non-life goods© Copyright The monetary Times Ltd 2006 "FT" and "monetary Times" are trademarks of The Financial Times Ltd solitude policySeparated from the rest of Asia by the Himalaya ton range, India forms the bulk of a subcontinent

As well as the Himalayas, there are two other main geographic regions, the Indo-Gangetic simple, which lies between the foothills of the Himalayas and the Vindhya Mountains, and the central–southern plateau India is the world’s largest democratic system and second most populous country after China The birthrate has recently been declining, but even at its current level India’s inhabitants will probably overtake China’s by 2030 After natural life of protectionism, India is opening up its economy to the outside world in the hope that the free marketplace will go some way to alleviating one of the country’s

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