摘要：The study is an attempt to evaluate the effect of initiating bancassurance on
technical efficiency performance of Indian commercial banks. The technique of Data Envelopment
Analysis (DEA) has been used to calculate technical efficiency scores for 20 major
commercial banks offering bancassurance services over the period of 2009-10 to 2011-12. The
ma jor outcomes of the analysis are: i) introduction of bancassurance increases average overall
technical efficiency (OTE) levels; ii) some banks are the gainers, while, some are the looser
on OTE front after introducing the bancassurance; iii) the initiation of bancassurance has
improved managerial efficiency of Indian commercial banks, while, a dismal performance observed
on scale efficiency (SE) front; iv) the SE gains are constrained due to the existence of
increasing returns-to-scale; and v) private sector banks following agency model have noticed
higher efficiency gains because of bancassurance. In sum, the banks need to improve upon
SE to universalize the efficiency gains from bancassurance. Given the existence of increasing
returns-to-scale, there exists ample scope for Indian commercial banks to improve upon SE
levels via exploiting the economies of scale through enlarging the magnitude of output(s).
