Oriental Bank of Commerce on Thursday announced a tie up with Oriental Insurance Company for selling general insurance products through its branches.

OBC, which earlier tied up with Life Insurance Corporation, will now distribute both life and non-life products through its branches.

"This will be in furtherance of the bank's customer centric commitment to provide value-added services of both banking and insurance through a single window," B D Narang, chairman, OBC, said after the signing up ceremony in New Delhi.

Oriental Insurance chairman S L Mohan said the tie-up reaffirms the company's commitment to the success of bancassurance in India.

Under the "symbiotic" arrangement, OBC will act as a corporate agent of Oriental Insurance.

OBC's nationwide network of 1,150 branches and a significant credit exposure to retail and small and medium enterprises would provide synergy to the PSU general insurer.

Oriental Insurance is one of the four leading insurers in the country with a premium income of Rs 2,868 crore (Rs 28.68 billion) in 2002-03 and has nationwide presence with over 900 offices.

OBC, on the other hand, is one of the best managed PSU banks with 14 per cent capital adequacy ratio and only 1.1 per cent of non-performing assets. The bank posted a net profit growth of 42.5 per cent at Rs 457 crore (Rs 4.57 billion) last fiscal.