Chennai Jan 16 (IANS) Private life insurer Aegon Religare Life Insurance, which has targeted a premium income of Rs.215 crore this fiscal, will infuse around Rs.85 crore as fresh capital by March.

'Post the infusion, our equity base will go up to Rs.550 crore,' said K.S. Gopalakrishnan, the company's chief financial officer and appointed actuary.

'Much of the funds will be used for building our business distribution network,' Gopalakrishnan told IANS over phone from Mumbai.

'Till date, our new business premium stands at around Rs.90 crore and we are confident of achieving the target as the bulk of life insurance sales in India happens during the first three months of a calendar year,' he added.

Aegon Religare is a three-way joint venture between the Netherlands-based Aegon (holding 26 percent equity), and India's Religare Enterprises (44 percent) and Bennett and Coleman (30 percent).

Aegon Religare, with 57 branches and a little over 7,000 agents, has created a separate portal for selling term insurance policies.

'We sell around 30 term assurance policies online daily. This saves us around 70 percent of our cost which has been passed on to policyholders in the form of low premium rates,' Gopalakrishnan said.

'We have sold more than 1,000 policies since November. The average sum assured is around Rs.60 lakh and the average premium per policy is around Rs.11,000.'

The company earned around Rs.15 crore in fresh premium this fiscal through direct sales, Gopalakrishnan said.