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In July, BNP Paribas Cardif said it will acquire a 26 per cent stake in IndiaFirst Life Insurance from Warburg Pincus, subject to regulatory approvals. Post completion of the transaction, IndiaFirst Life’s shareholding will comprise Bank of Baroda’s 65 per cent stake, BNP Paribas Cardif’s 26 per cent stake and Union Bank of India’s 9 per cent stake.<\/p>\n
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Gandhi said, \u201cOnce we get regulatory approval on the BNP Paribas Cardif stake acquisition, we will sit with our new shareholders one more time and decide the timing for the IPO and file DRHP again. IPO plans have not been shelved, it has just been deferred.\u201d<\/p>\n
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He also said that Cardif is a strategic investor and could bring access to global partnerships, technology and data capabilities. However, discussions on specific partnerships with banks have not yet begun and are likely to start after the shareholding transition and board induction.<\/p>\n
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He also said that even as the company is focusing on its agency channel, it will be a bank-led multi-distribution channel organisation. The agency channel will continue to expand alongside bancassurance rather than replacing it. Bancassurance currently accounts for about 60-70 per cent of business, while the agency channel contributes around 15-20 per cent.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe insurer has about 17,000 agents and is adding roughly 2,000-2,500 agents every quarter. The agency channel’s contribution to rise to around 25 per cent over the next five years,\u201d Gandhi said. The company expects the direct channel to account for about 5 per cent of its business this year.<\/p>\n
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The insurer is also making investments in technology, including its partnership with Salesforce, with an aim to improve productivity across distribution channels rather than focusing on any one channel. It is also stepping up the use of artificial intelligence (AI) across underwriting, sales, customer service, training, recruitment, calling and email automation. While immediate benefits are expected in customer service, the larger long-term gains are expected to come from improved sales productivity.<\/p>\n
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The insurer on Thursday also announced that it has selected Salesforce\u2019s Agentforce to advance its enterprise-wide AI transformation. It will embed trusted AI agents into critical processes to improve sales, streamline operations and enhance customer experience.<\/p>\n
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Gandhi also said that he does not expect AI adoption to result in a sharp reduction in headcount this year. Instead, employees are expected to be redeployed and upskilled for more complex activities that cannot be easily automated.<\/p>\n
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Along with AI, the insurer is shifting a significant amount of operational work from outsourcing to insourcing. The move is expected to generate savings partly by eliminating the GST cost incurred on vendor services, while also improving control and operational efficiency. The company is also setting up a centre of excellence in Jaipur, which is expected to go live in the next one to two months. IT-related operational expenditure currently accounts for about 5 per cent of total operational expenditure, with spending on both AI and cybersecurity increasing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 In July, BNP Paribas Cardif said it will acquire a 26 per cent stake in IndiaFirst Life…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12875],"tags":[43176,36008,35797,12883,21918,35824,26838,43174,43175,35798,35796],"class_list":["post-70571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bnp-paribas","tag-agentforce","tag-bancassurance","tag-bank-of-baroda","tag-bnp-paribas","tag-bnp-paribas-cardif","tag-indiafirst-life-insurance","tag-ipo","tag-rushabh-gandhi","tag-salesforce","tag-union-bank-of-india","tag-warburg-pincus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}