Chennai, March 6 (IANS): Public sector general insurance major Oriental Insurance Company Ltd plans to beef up its point-of-sale (PoS) swipe machines by 2017 end and hopes to collect around Rs 400 crore via this mode, a senior official said on Monday.

"We will be installing 500 more PoS terminals in our operating offices across the country by the end of this year (2017). Currently we have around 200 terminals and the weekly collection is around Rs 2 crore around Rs 100 crore a year," the official, not wanting to be named, told IANS here.

According to him, the collection of premium through the swipe machines was expected to be around Rs 400 crore.

"Based on the experience we will decide on adding more machines," he added.

The official said the use of swipe machines has increased post demonetisation.

"Only for one month premium collections were affected due to demonetisation. After that the collections were normal for the company," he added.

The company is also looking at empowering its agents to issue policies at the time of premium collection through the agent's portal.