It is interesting to note that one of the most significant changes in the financial services sector over the past few years has been the appearance and development of bancassurance. Aptly, in its full holistic form, it reaffirms the full potential of the customer database of the bank, to develop an excellent customer focused service for consumers, and the highest value on returns for the bank and insurer. Besides, it is not just about selling insurance products to bank customers but exploits

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... true synergies between, and the respective strengths of the bank and insurer. Indeed, this concept that readily originated in France, contemporary constitutes a dominant model in a number of European and other countries; is fast penetrating the sphere of Africa in general and Cameroon in particular. Explicitly, it should be noted that banking institutions and insurance companies have found bancassurance as an attractive and often profitablecomplement to their existing activities. In this respect, bancassurance has been a successful model in the European countries, contributing 35% of premium income in the European life insurance market. By the same token, it now contributes over 65% of the life insurance premium income in Spain, 60% in France, 50% in Belgium and Italy. Appositely, as reiterated above, the term bancassurance was use, for the first time, in France 1 , indicating simply the distribution of insurance products by bank branches. In fact, Gonulal et al., postulate that bancassurance is the process of using a bank's customer relationships to sell life and non-life insurance products, thus, emerging as a natural pathway for the effective development of insurance. 2 Equally, according to Elkington, bancassurance is basically the provision of and selling of banking and insurance products by the same organisation under the same roof. 3 More so, Swiss asserts that bancassurance can be described as a strategy adopted by banks or insurance companies aiming to operate the financial market in a more or less integrated manner. 4 In a similar manner, the Center for Insurance & Financial planning provides that bancassurance assumes a wide range of detailed arrangements between banks and insurance companies, but in all cases, it includes the provision of insurance and banking products or services from the same sources or to the same customer base. In sum, Shah and Salim assert that bancassurance is a system in which a bank has a corporate agency agreement with one insurance company to sell its product and by selling insurance products bank earns a revenue stream apart from interest. 5 In fact, in order to provide a way forward for the realisation of a viable legal and institutional framework for the regulation of bancassurance in Cameroon; the paper is presented in three parts. With the first part dwelling on the theoretical framework of bancassurance -by perusing its historical evolution, motives, critical success factors and pitfalls; the second part considering the principal forms and products of bancassurance. While the third part explores the development and modus operandi of bancassurance in the Cameroonian set-up. This is aimed to provide a periscopic view for banks, insurers and legislators in Cameroon to learn from the extant experiences of the European bancassurers and other vibrant jurisdictions. Theorical Framework of Bancassurance Apparently, since bancassurance usually covers a wide range of detailed arrangements between banks and insurance companies, the provision of insurance and banking products or services from the same sources or to the same customer base has been the primordial motive of this initiative. Therefore, in the context of economic globalization, the overlap and integration of the international capital markets, of information and technologies; the insurance market has become one of the most promising options to expand the banking business. Thus, the bankers' interest in insurance capital is also determined by the significant incomes from insurance activities, obtained by domestic insurers, which is confirmed, at the payment level constituted on most insurance branches. In this regard, if, at the emergence of the bancassurance model, its definition referred to the distribution -through credit institutionsof the insurance products attached to loans and other banking products, currently the concept has a much wider sense, including both the sale of the products in question through the distribution networks of non-bank financial institutions and providing complex products/services distributed through a common distribution channel and/or 1 Its universal use reflects the fact that this business model is most developed in France.