ICICI Prudential Life to ramp up rural presence

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ICICI Prudential Life, market-leader among private insurers, has decided to ramp up its rural presence. This is in view, of the sudden surge in insurance awareness in the rural market in the last two years, says Sachin Joglekar, senior vice president, ICICI Prudential Life.

For instance, in Kerala, where the company has the highest premia-collection points through a tie-up with South Indian Bank, it had opened 11 branches last financial alone. In the current year, five more branches are planned and all are in rural areas, Joglekar told FE.

The eye on rural is purely demand-driven, even forcing the insurance major to overshoot its own rural target by four-fold. In 2007-2008, the target was only to cover 25,000 rural customers in the country. But, coverage of as much as 1,17,000 customers was achieved in rural segment. This has set the company opening an average of two branches per day in the last eight quarters.

"Much of this has been because the unprecedented increase in the awareness level on insurance products available. While earlier, this was only in metros and cities, the maturing of the rural customer has made such distinctions seem dated," says Joglekar.