Bharti AXA plans to start mobile payment system

KOLKATA: Bharti AXA General Insurance (BAGI), a 74:26 JV between Sunil Mittal���s Bharti group and AXA of France, plans to install a system that will allow policy-holders to pay premium through their mobile phones. For this, it will team up with group company Bharti Airtel.

"We are interested in a setting up a system that allows premium payment through mobiles. We may also look at packaging insurance policies with mobile phone connections," said BAGI���s CEO Amarnath Ananthanarayanan.

Though Mr Ananthanarayanan did not share details, he said: "We are keen to offer services to our policyholders and have started working on it. We need to look at the economics of the system."

The company which has barely completed eight months of operations, is now planning to increase its branches to 29 from the present 17 and is working on a host of products in the health, and retail segments. "BAGI will leverage the Bharti Group's large customer pool and develop a strong multi-channel distribution network in both urban and rural markets," said Mr Ananthanarayanan.

He added that products like insurance companies paying the phone bills in case of hospitalisation of the policyholders and payment of monthly installments for home loans will gradually become popular. The company is also working on products like micro insurance, travel covers as well as home insurance. All these products are likely to be launched in the current fiscal.