SBI Plans To Enter General Insurance Biz

State Bank of India is looking at foraying into general insurance business early next year and has appointed a consultant. The bank is expected to forge alliance with a foreign player to set up a joint venture for general venture. The bank has infused Rs 500 crore capital in its life insurance subsidiary, SBI Life and may infuse Rs 2,000 crore next year. The bank saw a growth of 18 per cent in housing loans as on September 30, 2007 and will continue to focus in this segment. Retail advances now constitute about 25 per cent of the bank''s gross domestic advances and housing loans constitute 52 per cent of retail advances. The market share is about 25 per cent and the plan is to raise it to 50 per cent in the next three years. In order to increase the fee income the bank is focusing on treasury operations and doing lot of structured products and derivatives trading. It also plans to offer other products such as selling of gold coins, gold deposit schemes, bullion trading and technology related products such as real-time gross settlement, multi-city cheques, mobile banking and ATM sharing alliance with other banks, all of which will bring in more fee income