The wait is over, both HDFC Standard Life and ICICI-Prudential Life Insurance on Tuesday rolled out the first set of Life insurance policies at the same time. While HDFC Standard has come out with two basic insurance policies-an endowment assurance and a money-back policy, ICICI-Prudential launched an endowment policy, even though they received the approval from the IRDA for four products.

HDFC Standard's products come with four options: critical illness, accidental-death benefit, double sum assured and waiver of premium and the customers can pick any of these from the 14 pre-packaged products. ICICI-Prudential's life products will cover disability, hospitalisation, surgery and illness.

While HDFC Standard Life issued three endowment policies of Rs 100,000 each to three individuals, ICICI-Prudential issued seven endowment policies worth Rs 20,000 each to economically underprivileged children sponsored by indiainfoline.com.

Interestingly both the private insurers have pegged their premiums below LIC's rates. According to Mr. Satwalekar, MD, HDFC Standard Life, they are not going to compete on the price level because in the long run everybody loses in a price war. Their aim however is to be the largest private sector life insurer in the country with an emphasis on low-premium risk products. It has set itself a target of selling 25,000 life insurance policies in the first year of operations and opening 12 branch offices and nine representative offices. The focus of the company is to provide the best services, because this is what is ultimately going to make the difference. The future will also see the HDFC Standard Life combine launching unit-linked, individual pension and mortgage redemption policies.

ICICI-Prudential will begin commercial operations in Mumbai and Delhi shortly and will extend operations in a phased manner over the next 12 months. The company has got approval from the IRDA for two endowment plans and two deferred pension policies-single premium bond and regular premium bond. The company expects to write in excess of 10,000 policies in the last quarter of the current financial year with an average premium of around Rs 9,000 per policy.

All said and done with many more private insurers waiting to start their operations, the public can finally look forward to world-class products and competitive pricing.

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