According to officials, the hike was announced for the first time since 1995 when the insurance programme was extended to rural areas.
From now on, for every Rs 1000 of sum assured under RPLI, Rs 55 will be paid as bonus if the policy term exceeds 10 years.
For the policies whose term is less than 10 years, the bonus paid will be Rs 52 (up from the existing Rs 50).
"By this decision, an insurant having a policy of Rs one lakh will now be vested with a bonus of Rs 5500 per year as against Rs 5000 earlier, if the policy term exceeds 10 years and with Rs 5200 in case of other policies, Suneeta Trivedi, Chief General Manager, RPLI said.
"RPLI scheme of Post Office is becoming increasingly popular in the country and the fund grew at an average rate of 45 per cent in last few years. Enhancement of bonus makes the RPLI more attractive as compared to traditional insurers who only give bonus in the range of Rs 45 to Rs 50 for every Rs 1000," she added.
According to officials, while the premium amount collected from subscribers under RPLI was Rs 907.09 crore in 2006-07, the same increased to Rs 1159.74 crore in 2007-08 which is a 27.85 per cent increase. "We are targeting a growth of 40 per cent in the premium amount to be collected this year", Trivedi said.
As of now, the total number of live policies under RPLI is more than 85 lakh while the corpus size is about Rs 2500 crore. After proper Actuarial Evaluation of the fund, bonus is declared every year as percentage of the sum assured to the policy, she said.
RPLI utilises the massive network of more than 1.5 lakh post offices across the country. Premium is collected through the counters of these post offices.
