General insurance industry logs 9% growth in 2008-09

Posted: Friday, May 01, 2009 at 2322 hrs IST
Updated: Friday, May 01, 2009 at 2322 hrs IST

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New Delhi: Hit by economic slowdown, the general insurance industry clocked single digit growth of 9% compared to 12.6% last fiscal, according to Irda data.

Among 16 non-life insurers, Reliance General is the only company which posted negative growth of 1.62%. The company earned a premium of Rs 1,914.87 crore during 2008-09 against Rs 1,946.42 crore in the previous fiscal.

All the public and private sector companies taken together garnered a premium of Rs 30,601 crore as compared to Rs 28,052 crore a year ago, as per the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irda) data.

Of the total premium, the share of 12 private sector entities stood at Rs 12,572 crore while the remaining was contributed by four public sector players. Public sector companies proved to be more efficient as the pace of growth in percentage terms nearly doubled to 7.11% during the fiscal compared to 3.94% in the last year.

However, there was deceleration in growth for the private sector. The growth in premium collection slowed down to 12% against 29% in 2007-08.

ICICI Lombard, the largest player in the private sector recorded a mere 2.2% growth and collected premium of Rs 3,420 crore while the second largest player Bajaj Alliance collected Rs 2,640 crore.

Two companies including Bharti AXA General, Shriram General started operation during 2008-09.

During period under review market leader and public sector giant New India Assurance with 18% market share premium collection witnessed an increase of 4.5% to Rs 5,517 crore. It was followed by Kolkata-based National Insurance with premium collection of Rs 4,277 crore.

Chennai-based United India recorded double digit growth of 14.3% and collected a premium of Rs 4,275 crore while Oriental Insurance could only manage to collect Rs 3,961 crore during the year.

Two exclusive health insurers—Star Health and Apollo DKV—earned a premium of Rs 561 crore against Rs 171 crore in the previous financial year.

—PTI

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