Bangalore: India's LIC's $ 1 billion business bet on bancassurance channel, this year is worth 4.3 times more than Rs 1,100 Crore gathered by Behemoth's insurance the previous year. LIC policies were sold for worth 3.8 Crore and held Rs 1,200,000 Crore worth assets beneath the management belt, reports Kumar Shankar Roy of Financial Cronicle. A K Dasgupta Managing Director of LIC revealed that, "It's an ambitious target, but we know we can achieve it. We plan to develop the bancassurance channel so that it contributes five per cent to 10 per cent of our annual new business premium in future. This year, one of our channel partners (banks) has already promised to bring in close to Rs 1,000 crore," Apart from the LIC's MoU deal with Vijaya Bank, it has nine public sector banks and up to 100 financial entities which are inclusive of regional and rural cooperative banks. Dasgupta believes that even though the 21 Crore LIC customers have bank accounts it is possible to sell more policies. Vijaya Bank targets a contribution of 15 percent to LIC's total premium to be generated during this financial year.