With Covid claiming many lives, the importance of life insurance suddenly came to the fore. The industry expected numbers to go up after this tough phase. The figures in the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority’s latest business statement released recently show the industry is perhaps moving towards that.
According to Irdai data, the number of life insurance policies sold and the total amount of premiums collected have registered year-on-year (y-o-y) increase in June 2022, compared to the same month in the previous year.
Though the amount of total premiums collected (from private and public insurers) have shown moderate y-o-y growth of about 4 per cent, the total number of policies sold is up by more than 32 per cent. However, if you look at the number for just private insurers, premium collection was higher at around 29 per cent but the number of policies sold was much lower than the total number at about 12 per cent.
Premiums Collected
The total premium for all insurance players have increased by 4.15 per cent y-o-y from Rs 30,009 crore in June 2021 to Rs 31,254 crore in June 2022, says Irdai data. The modest growth comes on the back of tough macroeconomic environment.
Interestingly, for Life Insurance Corporation of India, the only public sector insurer in India, the figure went down from Rs 21,796 crore to Rs 20,643 crore, a degrowth of 5.29 per cent. LIC controls 62.42 per cent market share in the sector. According to experts, LIC de-growth in June 2022 could be attributed to the high base, as they saw record insurance sales during the pandemic.
If we look at the break-up of total premium collection, individual single premiums increased by about 12 per cent. On the other hand, individual non-single premium increased by about 22 per cent. The highest growth was, however, registered by the group non-single premium segment of more than 59 per cent.
Number Of Policies And Schemes Sold
The grand total number of policies and schemes sold for of all insurance companies have increased by a large 32.78 per cent, from 1,606,343 in June 2021 to 2,132,823 in June 2022.
LIC alone, however, registered a huge growth of more than 43 per cent, from 1,066,534 in June 2021 to 1,527,002 in June 2022.
If we look at the break-up of the total number of policies and schemes sold, for individual single premium plans, the number of policies and schemes sold have increased by 20.32 per cent and for individual non-single premium plans, the number has increased by 33.46 per cent. In this segment, group single premium policies sold showed the highest growth of more than 180 per cent.
Number Of Lives Covered Under Group Schemes
The grand total number of lives covered under the group schemes have increased by 101.3 per cent from 99,33,432 in June 2021 to 19,99,5534 in June 2022. For the group single premium category under this segment, the number has increased by 267.83 per cent from 32,29,918 in June 2021 from 11,88,0523 in June 2021.
Sum Assured
The grand total sum assured for all insurance players has increased by 17.99 per cent from Rs 4,49,878 crore in June 2021 to Rs 5,30,807.64 crore in June 2022. For individual single premium plans, the total sum assured has seen a de-growth of 0.18 per cent. Similarly, for individual non-single premium plans, the sum assured has increased by 9.11 per cent.
