Life insurance sector to grow 12-15%: LIC chief
Despite having a de-growth in life insurance businesses during lockdown periods last year, Life Insurance Corpor-ation of India (LIC), India's largest public sector insurer, believes that the life insurance industry is likely to grow by up to 15 per cent in coming years.
"Life insurance business, being done by 24 players in the country, is expected is to grow by 12 to 15 per cent in the coming years. The industry has added 1,06,035 agents to the force by the end of November last year," LIC chairman M.R. Kumar said while addressing an event.
"We can expect the number of agents will grow steadily in the coming years, too. Keeping in mind the unlimited opportunity of life insurance business in India, life insurers will continue to play a vital role in the job market under this new normal as well," Kumar added.
Due to the lockdown and related restrictions, which impacted the mobility of the marketing force, the life insurance industry, at the end of May 31, 2020, recorded a de-growth of 27.92 per cent in first year premium (FYP) to Rs 20,466.75 crore as compared
to Rs 28,395.89 crore and a de-growth of 51.02 per cent in policies-14,24,373 policies compared to 29,08,093 in the previous year, he said.
"However, the phased unlock process started from June 2020 resulted in increased economic activities, and our industry adopted innovative digital business processes in meeting the expectation of the market. As on November 30, the life insurers clocked a FYP of Rs 16,6662.96 crore compared to Rs 1,69,251.19 crore. The de-growth was brought down to 1.53 per cent," he said.
"The Ulip policies are giving an opportunity to market savvy customers to reap higher benefits in the new normal," Kumar said.
He said the rural market holds promise for insurers to expand their business. Irdai data for 2018-2019 shows out of the 286.48 lakh new policies sold, the share of the rural sector was just 66.37 lakh.