Hyderabad:
New premium collection of life insurance companies rose by nearly 9 per cent to Rs 12,838.24 crore in May compared to the same month last year, according to the Irdai data.
All the 24 life insurers had written new gross premium of Rs 11,801.01 crore in May 2017.
New business premium of Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), the largest and the only state-owned life insurer, expanded by 9.49 per cent to Rs 9,204.88 crore in May against Rs 8,406.76 crore in May 2017, the data released today showed.
LIC has the highest market share of 67.40 per cent in the life insurance business.
The remaining 23 life insurance companies collected Rs 3,633.36 crore during the month under review, up 7.04 per cent from the year ago's Rs 3,394.25 crore.
HDFC Standard Life's new premium collection was up by 30.82 per cent at Rs 790.14 crore in May 2018 compared to Rs 603.97 crore in the same month last year
SBI Life's new premium rose by 11.41 per cent at Rs 641.28 crore; Max Life by 19.63 per cent at Rs 235.11 crore; Bajaj Allianz Life by 6.82 per cent at Rs 214.25 crore, and Aditya Birla Sun Life by 37.73 crore at Rs 197.05 crore in May 2018.
DHFL Pramerica Life registered a rise of 35.13 per cent in its new business premium at Rs 121.02 crore, and PNB Met Life by 30.58 per cent to Rs 95.16 crore.
New business premium of ICICI Prudential Life, however, dropped 24.51 per cent at Rs 548.56 crore; Kotak Mahindra Old Mutual Life Insurance's by 2.15 per cent at Rs 205.76 crore, and Canara HSBC OBC Life's down by 42.61 per cent at Rs 46.07 crore.
India First Life new premium was down 11.01 per cent at Rs 62.35 crore while Sahara Life's new premium fell 98.17 per cent to Rs 2 lakh in May.
Cumulatively, the gross new business premium of all life insurers rose by 7.08 per cent to Rs 20,118.22 crore during April-May of the current fiscal year. For LIC, the new business during first two months of this fiscal was up by 5.66 per cent at Rs 13,560.15 crore.
Private sector players' cumulative new premium increased by 10.13 per cent to Rs 6,558.07 crore.
According to the Kotak Institutional Equities report, “Moderation in capital markets and rise in interest rates will likely reduce the intensity of inflows into capital market financial savings. Mutual fund inflows for the past two months have been stable at Rs 13,200-13,600 crore as compared to the peak of Rs 26,500 crore in August 2017.
“We hence expect inflows into ULIPs to be moderate in FY2019E. Most large life insurance companies are increasingly balancing their portfolio and shifting a bit towards traditional policies,'' said the report.