LIC exploring tie-ups with payment gateways

MUMBAI, SEPT. 3. Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) is exploring all existing payment gateways so as to enable its policy holders to pay insurance premiums and view status of their policy via the Internet.

``We are waiting for the existing payment gateways to rope in large public sector banks so as to benefit a maximum number of our policy holders'', LIC Executive Director Mr. A. Ramamurthy told newspersons here.

Discussions were on with ICICI, which already has a payment gateway in place, he said adding, LIC was also looking at other players like Global Telesystems.

Policyholders could instruct their bank, which is part of the gateway, to pay the policy premium to LIC via this medium, he said.

Meanwhile, the Union Minister of State for Finance, Mr. Balasaheb Vikhe Patil on Saturday inaugurated LIC's wide area network (WAN) connecting 323 branches in eight cities - Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Pune, Calcutta, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and New Delhi - and involving nearly two crore policies.

``With WAN, persons in any of these cities can have access to their policies in any of the other seven cities and will also enable policyholders to pay their premiums and get policy status from any of these places'', Mr. Ramamurthy said.

By March 2001, LIC plans to extend WAN to 33 other centres covering 293 branches thus taking the total number of branches connected to over 600, he added.

- PTI

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Section  : Business
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