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Bharti Axa Life Insurance Company is planning to ride on the Bharti group networks for selling its life insurance products. The company is planning to leverage not only the telecom distribution network of Bharti Airtel, but also the rural procurement and horticulture network of Bharti Field Fresh.

Nitin Chopra, chief executive officer of Bharti Axa, told Hindustan Times: “We do not have a bank in the group. But we have a huge Bharti Airtel network, which is even bigger than the big FMCG distribution networks. Just as riding on a bank’s network has been termed bancassurance, what we are attempting at Bharti Axa is called telc-assurance.”

Bharti Axa is also planning to use the Bharti Foundation’s rural school network to approach schoolteachers, their families and students’ families.

Chopra said, “We had to find a way of using Bharti Airtel in a non-intrusive way. We have tested seven different models already. Three of these have come up trumps while the other three need work. We are trying to expand the three models.”

Explaining one of the models, Chopra said two ways of approaching customers  at Airtel customer care centres had been tested. One method, tested in Hyderabad, had shown a 10 per cent rate of response.

“We are getting a better response from the Bharti network than the average response that one gets from the bank channel. Telc-assurance is totally untested and this is the first time any one in the world is doing it,” he added.

Chopra said the company would also use the normal agency channel to grow its insurance business. “Developing an agency network takes time. We are using all of Axa’s global experience to develop it in India.”

Bharti Axa is trying to develop products for the low-end subscribers of Bharti. “We are looking at products that will have an annual premium of Rs 1,000-2,000. This will really take insurance to people who have been so far considered un-insurable by insurers other than the LIC,” Chopra added.

Bharti Axa has sold a little over 2,000 policies till January 2007. “We are yet to offer a single-premium product and that should indicate what stage of rollout we are in,” He said. In fact, the insurer has six products--with a few others in the pipeline--that have already been approved by the regulator.

Email author: sumanlayak@hindustantimes.com