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The Life Insurance Corporation of India, which has targeted 5per cent of its premium income from overseas operations, is set to enter five new countries.
"We plan to enter countries such as Maldives, Botswana, Seychelles, Madagascar, Trinidad and Tobago Islands," said, R N Bharadwaj, managing director, LIC, while talking to news persons at the sidelines of a seminar on Insurance East organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry.
"We have already set up operations in Mauritius and would initially service and acquire clients in Botswana, Seychelles, Madagascar and Maldives through our Mauritius office. If we are able to capture enough business in these two countries, we would go for joint venture operations in all these countries where we intend to be large players," he said.
"Initially we would appoint brokers and agents to cater to clients in these areas," he said. Talking about Trinidad and Tobago Island operations, Bharadwaj said it would be services and catered from the Fiji office which LIC had opened sometime back.
LIC was also considering a sizable stake of the European market from the London office. "We have started operations in the UK sometime back and would like to cater to European countries from there," he said.
The same formula for opening up of companies in these countries would apply, depending on the volume of business LIC manages to do.
Talking about the clients LIC would target in foreign lands, Bharadwaj said, "We would basically have to compete with larger insurance companies present there. Insurance these days don't sell on sentiment and the second and third generation of Indians in these countries do not know us, hence we have to be as competitive as any other insurance company operating there."
Talking about the Sri Lanka operation, the managing director said, "We were towards the bottom of the list in Sri Lanka in our first year of operation, now we are nine there. We have targeted a number one slot in the next few years. In Nepal we are number three."