Japan's Tokyo Marine has sought to raise its holding in Edelweiss Tokio Life Insurance from 26 per cent to 49 per cent, financial services firm Edelweiss Financial Services Ltd said on Thursday.
The life insurance JV company has filed an application with Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB), the nodal government body monitoring foreign investment in the country.
This makes it the third foreign insurer to move to raise its stake in its Indian venture. Early this month, Axa got FIPB nod to hike stake in Bharti Axa; Aegon said it will raise its stake in Aegon Religare Life Insurance to 49 per cent as part of a larger deal where Religare is selling out its stake in the firm to media house and existing investor BCCL.
Among others, Ageas is in talks to hike stake in the tri-partite JV with IDBI Bank and Federal Bank, IDBI Federal Life Insurance; BNP Paribas Cardif of France is in talks to hike stake in its existing JV with SBI, SBI Life Insurance and early this year UK's Bupa said it would increase its holding in Indian health insurance venture, Max Bupa.
These moves follow the hike in the FDI ceiling in insurance from 26 per cent to 49 per cent in March this year.
Founded in 1879 as Japan's first non-life insurance company, Tokio Marine has expanded into overseas insurance and life insurance markets. It had formed the JV with Edelweiss in 2011 and the venture is currently present in 18 cities of India with 59 branches.
Mumbai-based Edelweiss functions through four clusters—credit, financial markets & asset management, life insurance and commodities. Last week, the company announced that it is expanding its alternative investment funds business by adding venture capital and private equity as asset classes and has appointed Pranav Parikh as head of private equity (PE), seed and venture capital (VC) funds.
