Bancassurance – The Emerging Channel for Selling Insurance Products

Abstract

In the competitive scenario to survive and excel in the market, insurance companies are looking for newer avenues and strategies. On the distribution front Insurance companies are going beyond the traditional channel of selling their offering through agents. A couple of years ago, the only way of distribution of insurance products was through Agents. Still the agents continue to be the major distribution channel, now a number of novel unconventional channels are being used to reach consumers. Some of emerging channels are bancassurance, brokers, the internet and direct marketing. The concept "Bancassurance”, which originated in France, has proved successful in several  countries around the world Besides France, bancassurance has been a success in Portugal and Greece. In the UK, its is not such a success is limited as severe restrictions on what banks getting into insurance selling, bancassurance is only about decade old in the US, and is expected to be a huge success in India too.