As part of our due diligence process for our Indian joint venture, Legal & General International commissioned bespoke research by Watson Wyatt to produce a country report on market potential early in the process. As well as showing projected demographics that indicated a growing customer need for appropriate insurance provision within India, this work also identified an important local requirement to achieve social inclusion for insurance products, especially in the deprived and rural areas. Such Rural and Social obligations that are stipulated by the Indian Insurance regulator (IRDA) and companies cannot be licensed if they do not meet these regulatory requirements.
Our strategic partners in India, Bank of Baroda and Andhra Bank, are state banks and are also fully committed to the ideals of Indian Government to promote greater financial inclusion. The business plan for our joint venture meets these obligations.
We continue to refine our compliance oversight into our overseas operations and have publicly committed to apply the ABI ClimateWise Principles across our overseas subsidiaries as one of our targets for 2009.