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rivate lender Bank Central Asia (BCA) and insurance company PT AIA Financial are aiming to strengthen their bancassurance cooperation with the launch of a series of protection products.

BCA and AIA launched on Tuesday four new products labeled as Maxi, namely Maxi Health, Maxi Kid Investa, Maxi Retirement and Maxi Legacy.

The new products will be marketed interactively to BCA customers whose ages range from 18 to 55 through AIA'€™s new sales kit called iPoS, a tablet computer application.

'€œAIA'€™s latest protection products will be available for BCA customers at more than 1,000 BCA branches all over Indonesia,'€ BCA director Henry Koenaifi said, adding that they were targeting 1 million customers out of the lender'€™s 12 million customers in its initial move.

Carl S. Gustini, president director of AIA, said the insurance company was confident that partnering with BCA to market the protection products would be profitable, given the lender'€™s broad network with more than 1,000 branches nationwide.

'€œThis strategic collaboration will also strengthen the remarkable partnership of AIA and BCA. This is our real contribution to the protection of more Indonesians,'€ he said.

Carl said that there was big opportunity in offering protection products in Indonesia given the country'€™s enormous population but low insurance penetration at about 1 percent in the market.

Taking an example, he said that market penetration for protection insurances in Hong Kong was 10 percent and in Japan was 8.8 percent. Indonesia is still above other neighboring countries such as Vietnam with 0.7 percent and the Philippines with 0.8 percent.

Carl said that thus far, bancassurance had accounted for half of AIA'€™s total premium income.

AIA is part of AIA Group Limited, which operates in 17 markets across Asia Pacific. It was established 90 years ago in Shanghai and has total assets of US$147 billion as of May 2013.

The Maxi products are not the first collaboration between the two financial service providers, which have offered a number of bancasurrance products,including the sharia unit linked life insurance Provisa Syariah.

As a group, BCA also runs businesses in automotive financing, sharia banking and general insurance.

Its general insurance subsidiary, PT Asuransi BCA, is projected to book Rp 278 billion ($22.7 million) in total premiums this year, an increase of about 15 percent from last year'€™s figure. It estimates that its total premium income reached more than Rp 242 billion last year, while its net profits reached Rp 22 billion.

BCA is also ready to operate its own new life insurance company, BCA Life, which is projected to operate in the first quarter of this year pending a license issuance from the Financial Services Authority (OJK).

It has injected around Rp 100 billion as issued and paid-up capital within the company.

Henry said BCA was not worrying about the possibility that the Maxi products could reduce potential customers for the group'€™s upcoming life insurer wing, saying that '€œcompetition is expected to fuel performance of BCA Life'€.