Mumbai: The much awaited credit card launch by the insurance sector giant, Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) has been delayed until after March 2008. Earlier during September this year, LIC along with GE Money and Corporation Bank had decided to venture into the credit card business.

LIC has a large ever-growing customer base and with this joint venture LIC policy holders could pay the premiums with their own credit card. This was expected to be a very convenient payment medium for the customers and bring down the transaction cost for LIC. Till now LIC had avoided premium payments through credit cards because of high charges.

Though no reason for the delay were mentioned, a senior LIC official Mr T.S Vijayan said, “We don’t plan to launch it by December or by March 2008. The joint-venture partners were expected to finalize the agreement by October, the process of forming the company is still on and a decision was yet to be taken about issuing a small stake to private investors.”