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tate-owned lender Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) is expecting to receive a larger amount of fee-based income this year from its “bancassurance” business after securing deals with several insurance companies.

BNI signed on Thursday agreements with its subsidiary PT BNI Life Insurance, PT Asuransi Jiwa Sequis Life, PT Asuransi Cigna and PT AIA Financial. Under the agreements, BNI would sell the insurance products from those companies from its branches across the nation.

The insurance products are Medicallinq from Sequis Life, AIA Ekskutif Link, CIGNA Dynamic Click and BLife Maksima.

“We want to have more products, especially for our priority customers. This year, we will put in insurance products that are combined with investment instruments,” BNI commercial and retail director Darmadi Sutanto said.

“In the future, we may add treasury products.”

BNI expected a total of about Rp 200 billion (US$21.8 million) in premiums would be collected this year, particularly from the company’s priority banking customers, with a fee-based income of around Rp 17 billion.

“We prioritize customers holding Emerald-priority banking. When the business runs smoothly,
we will widen the target,” said BNI’s vice president for wealth management and investment, Teddy Atmadja.

According to Teddy, BNI currently has about 12,000 priority banking customers, who save more than Rp 1 billion in the bank.

The third-party funds for priority banking customers, Darmadi said, reached around Rp 32 trillion last December and were expected to grow by about 25 percent to about Rp 40 trillion this year.

Teddy said BNI expected that between 750 and 1,000 of its total priority banking customers would purchase some sort of bancassurance product.

“Fee-based income is not our main focus. The most important thing is that the selling process has met requirements,” Teddy said.

“We will prioritize quality sales in a privileged segment. When the business is formed, the number [of premiums] will come by itself,” Asuransi Cigna president director Christine Setyabudi said.

Christine declined to reveal her company’s target from the cooperation.

However, she said that bancassurance contributed about 28 percent to total premiums last year.

Cigna is expecting that the bancassurance business will contribute to at 35 to 40 percent to total premiums this year.

Meanwhile, Sequis Life president director Tatang Widjaja said that the company’s bancassurance business contributed to about 3 percent to the company’s total premiums of Rp 1.7 trillion last year.

BNI Life president director Junaedy Ganie said that his company expected a 70 percent increase in total premiums to Rp 1.9 trillion this year, from Rp 1.1 trillion booked in last year.

“The bancassurance is expected to contribute around 51 percent this year,” Junaedy said, adding that the business contributed to 42 percent to total premiums the company gained last year.