Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) has bucked the trend and has posted some extraordinary results for the financial year ended March, 2020. The state-owned insurer managed to collect new business insurance premiums of ₹1.77 lakh crore. This compares very well with the previous year’s figure of ₹1.42 lakh crore. There has been a 25%+ increase. These details have emerged from the Insurance Regulatory Authority of India. This is a measure of the hold the public sector company has over the business. The private insurers have grown at 11.64% in the last year in terms of the premium collected. The absolute figure for all private insurers put together stood at ₹80,919.40 crore. LIC has been able to sell more than 2.19 crore policies in the year, which is the highest in six years.
Providing the break-up of these figures, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) data shows LIC collected ₹21,967 crore in the form of single premium and ₹29,260 crore as non-single premium. The corresponding ratios were 42.88 and 57.12 respectively. This is considered a healthy mix according to experts.
The other remarkable achievement for LIC in 2019-20 financial year has been the 30.01% growth observed in the group schemes. These schemes falling under the LIC Pension and Group Schemes vertical brought it premium income of ₹1.26 lakh crore against ₹91,179 crore the previous year. This enabled LIC to mark up its share in the Indian market to 80.54% from 77.94 % earlier.
The state-owned insurer marginally improved its position with market share of 75.9% and 68.74% respectively as far as number of policies and first year premiums are concerned. The increases are 1.19% and 2.5% respectively.
In terms of settlements, LIC settled 2.03 crore maturity claims and money back and annuities claims. The number of death claims and annuity payments stood at 7.50 lakh.
All eyes will now be on the IPO that LIC will float as announced by the Finance Minister in her budget speech. The company is being valued at anywhere between ₹9.9 lakh crore and ₹11.50 lakh crore.