One-fourth of India’s insurable population has life cover: LIC

Harjeet Ahluwalia

New Delhi, Jan 2: The latest statistics released by the public sector monolith Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) indicate that over 25 per cent of the insurable population in the country has some sort of life and/or pension cover.

As on March 31, 2001, the country had an estimated insurable population of 34.37 crore, in the age group of 15 to 69 years. This is equivalent to 25.11 per cent of the aggregate insurable population.

As per its definition, insurable population comprises persons whose risks need to be covered and who can pay for the coverage. By that yardstick, the nearly 2.5 crore persons covered by social security schemes constitute a separate set of insured population, officials explained.

According to LIC, a total of 8.63 crore lives were covered under individual assurance and pension plans as of March-end last year.
Effectively, since LIC was a monopoly till then, it can take the credit for extending insurance to more than a quarter of the eligible population, officials said. They said that with its extensive network and aggressive marketing, LIC premium income has contributed a 1.54 per cent share to the gross domestic product (GDP), while the non-life insurance accounted for only 0.5 per cent of the GDP.

LIC sold 1.94 crore new individual policies during 2000-01, with a first premium income of Rs 4,157.67 crore and a sum assured of Rs 1,23,093.1 crore. The growth in LIC’s business thus stood at 15.12 per cent by number of policies, 35.64 per cent in terms of sum assured and 35.94 per cent by first premium income.

That apart, it sold 2,20,732 policies for a total sum assured of Rs 1,678.25 crore collected as first premium income amounting to Rs 1,541.97 crore under Bima Nivesh and single-premium policies.
New individual pension policies numbering 344,769 fetched a first premium income of Rs 562.74 crore in all.

LIC’s total premium income in the year 2000-01 came to a whopping Rs 34,877.32 crore, registering an increase of 25.23 per cent over the previous year.

Assets of the corporation increased by over 20 per cent to Rs 1,93,282.99 crore, as did the life fund maintained by LIC, amounting to Rs 1,86,024.75 crore at the end of March 2001, again growing by more than 20 per cent.