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ank Muamalat Indonesia, a major sharia bank, and insurance and financial services provider Allianz Life Indonesia signed on Thursday a three-year agreement to market sharia-based insurance products to the bank’s customers nationwide.

Allianz Life Indonesia president director Joachim Wessling said that sharia insurance products would be offered in two ways.

“We see two businesses in doing the cooperation, the direct marketing and telemarketing or DMTM as well as in-branch sales,” Wessling said.

According to Allianz Life Indonesia deputy president director Handojo Kusuma, unit-linked insurance would be offered through in-branch services.

Meanwhile, three other types of accident insurance, hospital benefits and critical illness benefits, would be offered through DMTM.

“The products must be simple and easily understood by our customers,” Handojo said.

He said that Allianze targeted to earn around Rp 50 billion (US$5.63 million) to Rp 60 billion of premiums from in-branch sales by the end of 2012.

“For DMTM sales, we target around Rp 10 billion,” he added.

From the target of the premiums, Bank Muamalat retail director Adrian A. Gunadi said that the bank expected about Rp 15 billion in fee-based income.

“The figure will contribute more or less 10 to 15 percent of our fee-based income next year. Fee-based income is important for the bank development,” he said.

Adrian said that Bank Muamalat and Allianz targeted to sell 22,000 insurance policies next year after the agreement signing.

Previously, Bank Muamalat and Allianz carried out a pilot project of offering insurance packages at the bank’s 19 branches in Jakarta, starting from July 20.

“From the pilot project, as of Oct. 18, there were 6,358 polices worth up to Rp 850 million,” Adrian said.

Adrian said that the cooperation with Allianz was promising as the insurance provider currently served 1.8 million people in Indonesia. Meanwhile, Bank Muamalat has 1.5 million customers nationwide.

“We are sure that the cooperation with Allianz will not only complete our services but will also help us get new customers,” Adrian said. (rcf)