Life insurance player Birla Sun Life Insurance Company Limited will be increasing its agent count by around 4,400 in the next five months.
This apart, it will also be adding 11 new branches by June 2005. Birla Sun Life, at present, has 44 branches across the country.
Speaking on the sidelines of a press conference, Suneel Michigan, regional manager (south), Birla Sun Life, said, "Within the next four or five months, we will be increasing our agent count across India to 14,000 from the current 9,600."
"We have about 44 branches across India and we are planning to add 11 more branches by June 2005," Nani Javeri, chief executive officer, Birla Sun Life, said. Around nine of these 11 new branches will be in the Class III cities, he added. Birla Sun Life opened its third branch in Andhra Pradesh recently.
"In 2004, 236 insurance advisors (agents) of our company qualified for the Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT). Out of these 17 made it to the Top of the Table (TOT), the highest honour at MDRT and 38 qualified for the Court of the Table (COT)," Javeri said.
The MDRT is an international, independent association of more than 29,000 life insurance and financial services professionals that aims at promoting healthy financial practices through consumer education.
To be qualified for MDRT, an insurance professional has to collect around Rs 24 lakh premium annually. For COT, the annual premium collection has to be around Rs 65 lakh (Rs 6.5 million) and for TOT it has to be around Rs 125 lakh (Rs 12.5 million), Javeri said.
Birla Sun Life earned new insurance premium of Rs 391 crore (Rs 3.91 billion) for the nine months ended December 2004. The company had recently increased its capital to Rs 350 crore (Rs 3.50 billion).