Mumabi:
Led by the state owned Life Insurance Corporation (LIC), Indian life insurance industry, with 24 players.at almost Rs 1,94 crore, has just managed to a post a double digit growth of 11 percent in its first year premiums for the financial year 2017-18 (FY18).
The growth seems to have slowed down significantly during the reporting period, as the industry had grown by 26 pc to Rs 1,75,021.89 crore in 2016-17.
According to data from the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI),released on Friday.among the segments,the group single premiums(Rs95,127.30 with growth of 7 pc) followed by individual non-single premiums(Rs 60, 289 cr, 19 pc), individual single premium(Rs 31, 820 crore, 17 pc) contributed a majority chunk to the premium collections.
Unlike previous years, when there had been deceleration in the number of total policies sold, in FY18, the total number of policies/schemes sold have gone up by 6.6 pc to 28.2 million.
The private sector companies are ahead of LIC in terms of growth in new premium collection.
LIC collected Rs 1.34 lakh crore of new premiums in FY18 showing an 8 percent growth over the previous year while private life insurers led by HDFC Life collected Rs 59,314.55 crore in FY18 showing a 17.1 percent growth over FY17.
Moreover, HDFC Life- with a premium of Rs 11,349 crore and 30 pc growth)-has over taken SBI Life- that has seen its premiums up 8 per cent to Rs10,965 crore – as the number one player among the private sector players with regard to new premium in the industry .
The other three private sector insurance players are – ICICI Life (Rs 9,118 crore, 16 pc growth ), Max Life(Rs 4,348 crore, 18 pc ) and Bajaj Life (Rs 4290 crore, 30pc).
Rajesh Sud, MD & CEO , Max Llife .
`At Max, we are looking at achieving growth between 'high teens' (15-18 per cent) in terms of new sales in the current fiscal,’’ said Rajesh Sud, MD & CEO , Max Llife .
RM Vishakha, MD & CEO , India First Life.
RM Vishakha, MD & CEO , India First Life. said focus on profitable topline growth is the only way out for the industry.
“We had a good performance in 2017-18. Our 13th month persistency surged up to 76 per cent in the fiscal year 2018 from 74 per cent a year ago,'' said Vishakha.
For the year FY 2017-18, the life insurer's gross collections stood at Rs 2309 crores, with new business premium of Rs 1497 crores and renewal premium at Rs 812 crores.The company recorded total new business APE of Rs 664 crore for the year from Rs 528 crore a year ago, hence witnessing YoY growth of 26%.
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