Life insurers' products cross 600 in FY16

This rose from 516 products as on March 31, 2015, according to data from Life Insurance Council

 

At a time when the Insurance Regulatory Development Authority (Irdai) has asked life insurers to file only five products a year, the life insurance sector had 631 products for customers at the end of 2015-16. This rose from 516 products as on March 31, 2015, according to data from the Life Insurance Council.

The regulator had asked insurers to file a ‘product planner’ every year. This included an indicative plan of how many products they would file each year, quarter by quarter. It had also said if the number of these products exceeded five in a financial year, then the insurer should furnish the supporting market research and product-wise persistency for the 13th, 25th and 37th months as on April 30 of the previous year. Among the total products in FY16, nearly 475 were individual products and 156 were group. This rose from 375 and 141, respectively.

While individual products outnumber group products, life insurance companies have seen slower growth in individual first-year premium collections for 2015-16. While individual first-year premiums saw a five per cent growth in FY16 compared to FY15, group segment premiums saw a growth of 39 per cent for the financial year. This led to a double-digit growth of 23 per cent for 2015-16. Earlier, there was a lot of resistance from insurers on the ‘five product a year’ norm, but now this has been accepted by the sector.

According to insurance sector officials, the pace of product approvals has also improved, enabling them to launch products throughout the year.