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| Cricket displays at the dinner. |
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| AMP Sanmar Assurance Company Limited |
| A Partnership for Life is off to a good start |
| AMP Sanmar Assurance Company Limited, a joint
venture for life insurance business between Australia’s 153-year-old
Australian financial services giant and the Sanmar group, was
launched in a colourful ceremony on Monday, January 21, 2002
at the Park Sheraton, Chennai. |
| Highlights of the launch were the cricket
ambience created at the venue, with both joint venture partners
owing a strong allegiance to the promotion of cricket, and a
video presentation to announce the launch, followed by a videotaped
address by AMP Sanmar’s brand ambassador, Steve Waugh, the Australian
cricket captain. |
| The chief guest was former President of India
R Venkataraman, “whose name is inextricably linked with the
industrial development of the state” in the words of N Sankar,
Chairman, Sanmar group, who described him in his welcome address
“as a very long-standing well-wisher and friend of our family.”
Sankar spoke of the Sanmar group’s core competency of identifying
new businesses and organizing and launching them well, while
explaining the decision to enter the life insurance business
in an era of specialization in core competence. |
| Bringing this particular competency of establishing
and managing a new business in India, and marrying it to AMP’s
competencies in the financial services business, in a true partnership,
was facilitated by Sanmar’s three-decade old experience of successfully
establishing and managing joint ventures. |
| Sankar stressed the trust that Sanmar’s business
practices, management style and cutting edge HR management practices
enjoy from a variety of constituents, customers, shareholders,
banks, financial institutions, depositors and other stakeholders,
15 international JV partners, suppliers, customers, the general
public, and the employees of the group. |
| RV’s words of advice |
| In his speech, the former President who unveiled
a commemorative plaque on the occasion, emphasized the value
of the firm foundation laid in the early years of independent
India through the Plans and the mixed economy model, as well
as the harm done by India’s failure to switch to a free market
economy once the need for controls ceased to exist. As someone
with a long association with the Sanmar group and the family
behind the group headed by Chairman Emeritus, K S Narayanan,
he wished the new joint venture all success. Noting the huge
size of the life insurance market in India, he called upon AMP
Sanmar to spread wide and diversify to serve the customer’s
interests best. |
| AMP International Managing Director Tim Wade
said that in 1948, AMP began life as a mutual or community co-operative,
with a vision of providing people with financial security through
good times and bad. That vision became a business which first
spread to New Zealand and then to the United Kingdom within
its first 10 years. The motto of that business was: “A certain
friend in uncertain times”. |
| AMP owed its origins as Australian Mutual
Provident, to three public-spirited citizens who devised a plan
to form a provident society to help Australian colonies to emerge
from the depression in 1848. Demutualised four years ago, AMP
now operates in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, and through
subsidiaries and associate companies in over 26 countries around
the world. Its total assets under management are close to 300
billion Australian dollars or over 700,000 crore rupees. |
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| The former President of India, R Venkataraman,
formally launching AMP Sanmar Assurance Company in Chennai.
Others seen from left are: Tim Wade, Managing Director, AMP
International, S V Mony, Chief Executive Officer, AMP Sanmar,
Penelope Anne Wensley, High Commissioner of Australia in India,
and N Sankar, Chairman, Sanmar group. |
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| N Sankar, Chairman, Sanmar
group, said that he had been working hard at establishing an
Australian joint venture for Sanmar for quite some time, and
it had “become a sort of challenge” for him. “Australia is one
country that I am very fond of. And, India and Australia share
many common interests, and the most talked about, of course,
is cricket.” |
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| “The foundations for greater
cooperation in the future between India and Australia have been
laid”, said former President of India R Venkataraman. |
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| Tim Wade, Managing Director,
AMP International, said: “The Indian partner’s willingness to
grant the overseas partner a significant management influence
will help AMP bring all its skills to bear more quickly, efficiently
and effectively”. |
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| AMP brings to the joint venture considerable distribution
skills that enable it to distribute even its competitors’ products,
besides its own, supported by state-of-the-art back office systems
and actuarial skills honed over the last 150 years. These will help
the Indian joint venture craft unique products to suit the needs of
Indian customers. |
| Creating better futures |
| Wade complimented the Sanmar group for the
excellent reputation for integrity it enjoys and AMP Sanmar’s
formidable combination of managerial talent headed by former
GIC Chairman S V Mony. After dwelling on AMP’s demonstrated
strengths, he referred to the vital contribution to communities
that the Australian major made, in sports and culture, sponsoring
the torch relay at the Sydney Olympics, for instance. He spoke
of the common passion for sport, cricket in particular, shared
by the two countries as well as the joint venture partners.
“Australia has the world’s best team and India the world’s best
batsman,” he remarked while hailing the synergy between the
two companies. He assured the audience that AMP was committed
to a long-term relationship with India, Sanmar and the customer,
“creating better futures” for Indians. |
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| The backdrop for the launch. |
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| High Commissioner for Australia in India and
Guest of Honour Penelope Anne Wensley congratulated AMP on choosing
as its joint venture partner the Sanmar group, the perfect partner.
It was essential for any Australian company wanting to succeed
in India to pick a company that really understood India’s “challenges
and particularities”. She also complimented Sanmar for choosing
AMP, proudly Australian and synonymous with security and safety.
She also praised both partners for starting the venture in Chennai.
She was “struck by the warmth, spirit and southern hospitality,”
of the city. It was a very exciting time to be in India, and
those companies would succeed which focused on the positives,
not those who were fair weather friends. |
| Wensley made a reference to AMP Sanmar’s brand
ambassador, the Australian cricket captain Steve Waugh and,
his acceptance in India as a sporting icon and philanthropist.
Using a cricket analogy, Wensley, said that in addition to being
dependable, AMP Sanmar needed leadership, teamwork, the ability
to run fast, and steady hands. |
| Large potential |
| Chief Executive Officer S V Mony predicted
high growth in the Indian insurance market, some 15-18 per cent.
According to him, the high domestic savings rate amounting to
25% of GDP meant strong potential for growth in savings and
pension products. “Potential for life insurance in India, therefore,
is very large,” he added. |
| According to Mony, AMP Sanmar will market
life insurance and savings products in a market that is traditionally
agent driven, initially through a well-trained agency force,
but is also negotiating strategic alliances and corporate agencies.
Emerging new distribution channels will eventually lead to multi-channel
distribution. The wide range of products on offer will initially
comprise special endowment, money back, children’s, term life
and whole-of-life policies. |
| Mony described “a reasonably flat organization
structure, designed to facilitate speedy responses to customers.”
Ten Customer Service Centres would be ready by end January at
places like Chennai, Vellore, Coimbatore, Bangalore, Hyderabad,
Kochi and Kottayam, according to him. 25 more such centres would
be ready by end March, he said. |
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| Guest of Honour Penelope Anne
Wensley, High Commissioner of Australia in India, said that
the joint venture was “important for relations between Australia
and India”. She described both JV partners as highly respected,
pioneering companies. |
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| S V Mony, CEO, AMP Sanmar,
said: “The joint venture will be in a state of readiness faster
than others... We have gone through a rigorous process of selecting
people to promote the company and the brand. A brand strategy
document has been evolved at the micro as well as macro levels”.
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| A section of the audience. |
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| Mandolin U Srinivas entertained the guests. |
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| India’s and Australia’s cricket legends including
Steve Waugh, AMP’s brand ambassador, adorn the dais. |
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| Guests at the dinner. |
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| An attraction at the launch was the cricket ambience
there. The pavilion in the picture is that of the Sanmar pavilion
at the IIT-Chemplast cricket ground. On display on the opposing
walls are a campaign of seven advertisements featuring Australian
captain Steve Waugh and other cricket legends. |
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| The Sanmar pavilion at the IIT-Chemplast cricket
ground was recreated at the dinner, serving as the bar. |
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