SBI Life fresh premium up by 12 pc this fiscal

MUMBAI: SBI Life Insurance on Tuesday said its new business premiums for the year ended March 31, 2009, grew by 12 per cent to Rs 5,386 crore as compared to Rs 4,792 crore during the last fiscal.

The gross written premium (GWP) of the company grew by 28 per cent to Rs 7,212 crore from Rs 5,622 crore in the year-ago period, SBI Life Insurance said in a statement here.

"Despite the prevailing slowdown, we outpaced life insurance industry's growth rate primarily due to trust and transparency of the SBI brand, our customer-centric approach and the capital efficient multi-distribution model. We will continue to focus on enhancing the all-round quality of our business," SBI Life Insurance Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer U S Roy said.

SBI Life Insurance is a joint venture between State Bank of India and BNP Paribas Assurance.

The company's new business annualised premium equivalent (APE) rose by 33 per cent to Rs 4,896 crore.
SBI Life covered over 1.3-crore lives during the year. Of the overall product portfolio, SBI Life's unit- linked scheme inflows contributed to just over 60 per cent, while non-unit linked products accounted for the balance.