Shriram General Insurance (SGI), the non-life insurance subsidiary of Shriram Capital, and its South African partner Sanlam, are mulling over acquiring non-life insurance operations in Asia, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Myanmar.
India-based SGI, which recently acquired a Philippines-based non-life insurance firm Monarch Insurance, is reportedly looking for deals in the range of $50m-$75m, with its partner, reported Business Standard.
Shriram Group's group director G S Sundararajan was quoted by the news agency as saying that Shriram may not go beyond $5m-$10m as it wants to keep its investment size under 10% of what Sanlam invests.
"To validate our hypothesis, we thought we should experiment with a small investment and that is why we supported SGI's investment in Monarch Insurance. If this is successful, we will look at more such opportunities.
"Sanlam is our strategic partner, who has interest in Asia for such opportunities and we will be collaborating with them if they want us to," Sundararajan added.
Established as a life insurance company in 1918, South Africa-based Sanlam has a market capitalization of more than $6bn. The company invested nearly INR25bn ($405m) in Shriram Group's financial service businesses last year for a 26% stake.
Shriram General Insurance, which reported a premium income of INR3.47bn ($56m) in the first quarter of 2013, offers motor insurance, fire insurance, engineering insurance, marine insurance, among others.
