LIC eyes increasing market share in policies, first premium

Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) has set a target to achieve 85 per cent of its market share in terms of policies and 80 per cent in terms of first premium by the end of the current fiscal.
After the dismal performance in 2014-15, the company has started recovering its market share in the last four months of the fiscal.
"Our market share has improved and now we are looking at taking it further to 80-85 per cent in terms of policies and 75-80 per cent in terms of first premium by the fiscal-end," LIC chairman S K Roy told PTI here.

The Corporation soft-launched its first Ulip product after a gap of 20 months. LIC's New Endowment Plus is a unit linked non-participating endowment assurance plan which offers investment-cum-insurance cover during the term of the policy.
"Ulip will help us in achieving our target, but we are not fully dependent on it. We are quite hopeful that Ulip will do well. We are also planning to launch 6-7 traditional products during the current fiscal," Roy said.
"The Corporation has set first premium income target at Rs 31,000 crore and 3 crore policies for 2015-16. We have already clocked a healthy 31 per cent growth at over Rs 5,700 crore in the first quarter of the current fiscal year," he said.

Going by the July 2015 performance, the Corporation, at 73 per cent of market share each in premium and policies, has almost regained its lost market share.

"There was a decline of over 14 per cent in premium income in 2014-15. However, in the latest quarter our premia inflow was growing at 30 per cent. In May at 69.30 per cent, we regained around 130 basis point of market share.." he had told PTI earlier.
The Corporation has mobilised Rs 26,849.23 crore of premium till July, up 10 per cent over Rs 24,502.17 crore earned in the year-ago period.
Similarly, the Corporation has sold 50,77,413 policies, a growth of 22 per cent till July.

The life insurance industry has earned a premium of Rs 36,888.07 crore till July, up 14 per cent over Rs 32,486.06 crore and 65,21,197 policies, a growth of 18.33 per cent till July.
However the private sector has mobilised Rs 10,038.84 crore premium till July this year, a growth of 25 per cent over Rs 7,983.89 crore, which was collected in July 2014.
LIC collected a premium of Rs 78,308 crore in 2014-15, a decline of 14 per cent against Rs 90,645 crore in 2013-14. Its number of policies, too, fell much more drastically to 2.07 crore in FY15 from 3.45 crore in FY14.