LIC to hire 1 lakh agents in south central zone this fiscal

The south central zone (comprising Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka) of state-owned Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) will be recruiting 100,000 field workforce to give a push to its growth targets set for the current financial year.

Speaking to Business Standard at an event to celebrate LIC’s 55th anniversary on Friday, zonal manager AK Sahoo said the new recruits would take the total strength of LIC’s agents in the zone to 300,000 and to 15 million on an all-India basis.

“The LIC agent attrition rate is currently at 15-20 per cent nationally as well as in the zone. This apart, there are a few agents who do not possess enough knowledge on the products, premium calculations and policy maturity information. We are putting in efforts to reduce attrition by organising hand-holding events and training programmes,” he said.

Sahoo said the zone was laying more thrust on the micro insurance segment and thus had opened a separate vertical for this channel.

“Under the micro insurance vertical, we have covered 637,740 lives in the last financial year. So far in the current year, we have covered 199,033 lives. We are seeing a strong business opportunity in this space and therefore expect to reach the 685,000 mark by the end of the year,” he said.

On the zone’s new business, he said the zone had completed 5.8 million policies with a premium of Rs 5,596 crore during the 2010-11 year and 1.27 million policies with a premium income of Rs 985 crore up to July this year.

“We are confident of crossing the 6.8-million policy milestone with a premium of Rs 6,850 crore by the end of this year,” he added.

Stating that the corporation at present had no plans to add more branch offices to the existing 166 in the zone, Sahoo said they were in the process of setting up 10 satellite offices so as to take their products and services closer to the customers.