Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), the country’s largest insurer, has managed to mitigate some of the losses in new business premium to four per cent during November as against a 16 per cent drop in October. As per the latest Irda report, while ICICI Prudential Life Insurance continued to lose its share in new business premium, SBI Life Insurance, the second largest private sector contender, with a collection of Rs 560.84 crore, pipped ICICI Prudential for the first time during November.

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LIC collected a new business premium of Rs 3,346.39 crore by selling 25.80 lakh policies in November. The state-owned insurer has regained its market share in the individual single premium segment, from 87 per cent in October to 89 per cent in November.

LIC, which has been losing its market share over the past few months, had earlier said that it would enhance its share through sale of traditional products, in contrast to unit-linked policies that were hot favourites till March 2008. The company’s market share stood at just over 50 per cent in August, which it plans to increase to over 65 per cent by March this year.

In an attempt to enhance its market share, LIC has recently launched a capital guaranteed product – Jeevan Aastha. The public sector insurer intends to garner premiums of about Rs 25,000 crore by January 21. The insurance major covered 3.43 lakh lives under the individual single premium during November. In group single premium, LIC dominated with 92.4 per cent share.

Meanwhile, private sector insurers such as ICICI Prudential and Bajaj Allianz have been losing market share over the past few months, while the country’s second largest private sector insurer SBI Life Insurance has moved to the top slot in new business premium during November.

ICICI Prudential witnessed a drop of 45.96 per cent on a month on month basis in new premium income in November.

“The downturn in the equity market has taken away the Ulip market. This has led to a dip in the premium collection of the private insurance and, especially, ICICI Prudential which is very aggressive in this segment,” said an insurance broker.

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