Page 13 - Insurance Times December 2018

Private Life Insurance

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Oriental Bank of Com- PNB MetLife gets nod for IPO
merce plans to sell stake PNB MetLife India has received Sebi's approval to float an IPO. PNB MetLife,
which had approached Sebi in July seeking its
in life insurance JV clearance to launch IPO, obtained Sebi's "obser-
Oriental Bank of Commerce plans to vations" on November 2, as per the latest update.
divest its stake in its life insurance The observations are necessary for any firm to
joint venture as part of efforts to launch public issues like initial public offer, follow-
improve its financial and operational on public offer and rights issue.
performance. The stake sale in
According to the draft papers, the IPO will put up
Canara HSBC Oriental Bank of Com- 49,58,98,076 shares for sale, worth 24.64 per cent stake dilution. PNB will offer
merce Life Insurance Company Ltd is up to 8,04,95,242 shares in the IPO, while Metlife International Holdings LLC will
in line with the government's re- offload 12,90,36,281 stocks.
forms agenda for PSU Banks.

The government had unveiled the PNB MetLife launches artificial Intelligence-powered
reforms agenda earlier this year to
improve governance and asset qual- customer service app 'Khushi'
ity of PSU banks, most of whom are PNB MetLife, has launched an Artificial Intelligence-powered customer service
reeling under a heavy pile of bad app 'Khushi', which aims to provide assistance to
loans. The agenda includes mea- policyholders for their insurance-related queries.
sures for prudential and clean lend-
ing, enhanced credit availability, and "U (You) in Khushi means the customer and they
focus on small and medium-sized are at the centre of whatever we do. We want them
enterprises. (customers) to be happy. We want them to have a
meaningful interaction everytime they come in
The insurance company's net profit touch with us," Vijaya Nene, Director Operations
was Rs 168 crore for the year through and Services, PNB MetLife, told. The mobile
March 2018, up from Rs 111 crore applicaiton, now available on Android, empowers
the previous year. Its gross written
premium rose to Rs 2,781 crore in the the customer and ensures customised experience for policyholders.
year through March 2018 from Rs A policyholder can use the app to upload documents; download receipts and
2,295 crore the year before. statements; get policy features; premium due details; get fund value and port-
folio details; and update contact and KYC details. When requested, this app can
ICICI Securities is the financial ad-
viser to Oriental Bank of Commerce also locate the nearest PNB MetLife branch, arrange a call back from call cen-
on the stake sale. The investment tre representatives, fix an appointment with an advisor, among others.
banking firm has called for expres- Nene clarified that Khushi is not a chatbot, but an AI-powered app, which is
sions of interest from prospective both text and voice-based. "Khushi is intuitive. It actually looks at your inten-
buyers for the stake in the insurance tion. It's not chatbot kind of standard templated response - responses of Khushi
company. are more meaningful because of machine-learning capability," she said.

The Insurance Times, December 2018 13