Amid devolution, LIC new biz premium crosses ₹1.5L crore, income soars 18%
Life Insurance Corporation’s (LIC) new business premium has crossed the ₹1.5-lakh-crore-mark for the first time on Friday (February 7), helping the national insurer improve market share to 77.61 per cent.
This comes days after Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her 2020 budget speech announced stake sale of LIC through Initial Public Offering (IPO). With this, the Centre aims to set a record disinvestment target for the year 2020-21.
India’s financial giant’s total income grew by 17.79 per cent to ₹2,97,017.28 crore as of September 2019 from ₹2,52,149.60 crore a year ago, chairman M. R. Kumar said.
Total assets of the Corporation increased by 7.92 per cent to ₹2,25,905.42 crore as of September 2019 from ₹29,89,276.53 crore, he added.
The milestone was led by first year individual new premium, which as of January has expanded by 17.48 per cent, while the number of new policies sold jumped 29.42 per cent to ₹45,199 crore, taking the total policies sold to 1,95,85,635, the chairman said.
The composite market share in terms of the number of policies and the first-year premium as of January end stood at 77.61 per cent and 70.02 per cent, respectively, which has increased from 73.54 per cent in number of policies and 66.26 per cent in first-year premium, the chairman said.
The pension and group schemes vertical, which looks after the group schemes and superannuation business of the Corporation, has created a new record by clocking over ₹1 lakh crore in new premium income so far during the current financial year.
This vertical has contributed ₹1,05,566 crore as new business premium income as against ₹66,748 crore in the previous year. The vertical has covered 2.45 crore lives as of January under its social security schemes.
During the current fiscal year, LIC has paid 1,42,93,289 maturity claims amounting to ₹69,748 crore as of end January, Kumar said, adding the Corporation also settled 5,99,881 death claims amounting to ₹9,866 crore, of which 96.83 per cent claims which were non-early death, were settled within 15 days of intimation.
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To comply with new Irdai regulations, LIC has modified its existing products with new features such as revised surrender value and extension of revival period from two years to five years.
During FY2018-19, LIC generated the highest valuation surplus of ₹53,214.41 crore, registering a growth of around 9.9 per cent over the previous year and paid a dividend of ₹2,610.74 crore to the government, again the highest in history.
On its online sales, the chairman said the Corporations Customer Portal has 1,33,78,231 users. To increase its online presence, it launched a chatbot called LIC Mitra early January 2020.
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(With inputs from agencies)
