Insurance companies are rushing up to finalise tie ups with payments banks and small finance banks to sell their insurance products via these new channel. While it is not clear whether they would be incorporated into the corporate agency channels, these niche banks' branch network will be used to sell products.
This comes at a time when there were apprehensions expressed by the insurance regulator saying that these tie-ups with these niche banks may not be very successful. The chief executive of a mid-size life insurance company said that there were doubts earlier whether the regulator would give a nod to tying with these specialist banks since their processes and operations would differ from those of a large bank. "We now have begun talks and tie-ups would be finalised in the next few weeks. However, in the beginning only pure term and endowment products would be sold and based on the response we would launch unit-linked insurance products and mediclaim policies at a later stage," he said.