Leading private life insurance company, Max New York Life Insurance launched unit linked child plans in Punjab on Wednesday. SMART Steps are a range of unit linked plans that facilitate planning for children’s needs like higher education, marriage and provide financial security as well.
Talking to FE, Kenneth Sannoo, senior vice president-Head Agency (North & East) Max New York Life revealed that Punjab is a huge growth market due to its high awareness levels. A recently conducted Max New York Life ? NCAER India Financial Protection survey suggested that insurance awareness in Punjab stood at 80% compared to 78% in Haryana. However, it is below that of the city beautiful which has an awareness level of 93%.
Surprisingly, despite high awareness levels, the ownership of insurance is very low in the region with it being 19% in Punjab, 27% in Haryana and 51% in Chandigarh. “To tap the market in Punjab, the company has opened about 35 offices and is specially focusing on rural channels. As of now the company is getting 6% of its total business from this region,” he said.
As for SMART Steps range of plans, he revealed that the plans offered customers the choice of investing their premium in five investment funds offered by Max New York Life – Secure, Conservative, Balanced, Growth and Growth Super – to suit their risk appetite from investment in low-risk assets such as government securities and corporate bonds to the ones investing in high risk assets such as equities. The minimum annual premium of SMART Steps and SMART Steps Plus is Rs.20,000 and for SMART Steps Single Premium it’s Rs.50,000.
Discussing the performance of the company, he said Max New York Life has sold over 1.75 million policies till now with more than Rs. 53,656 crore in sum assured. It has more than 28,288 agents and 173 offices across India.
