State-owned Life Insurance Corp has reversed the trend of losing its market share by registering a hefty growth in the current fiscal, Parliament was informed today.
“In the current fiscal year, up to February 28, 2010, the LIC has increased its market share in terms of first year premium to 65.06 per cent and in terms of policies to 70.79 per cent,” Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee informed Rajya Sabha in a reply.
The life insurance behemoth had 61.12 per cent market share in terms of first year premium income and 70.52 per cent in terms of insurance policies in 2008-09, he said.
LIC had been losing its market share since the life insurance market was opened up to the private sector in 2000-01. As on date, there are 22 private insurance companies against one public sector life insurer LIC.
“In a growing market, where new private players are
entering, the market share of the leading player i.e. LIC is bound to reduce,” Mukherjee said.
However, since the opening up of the sector, the growth of life insurance industry, generally measured by life insurance penetration (premium as percentage of GDP) has risen to four per cent in 2008-09 from 2.15 per cent in 2000-01 “which shows a healthy growth (rate) of life insurance in the country”, he added.
During the same period, the total premium of private life insurers has risen to Rs 64,503 crore from Rs 273 crore with an accretion of Rs 64,230 crore. This was against the total premium of LIC that grew to Rs 1,57,288 crore from Rs 49,822 crore with a total accretion of Rs 1,07,466 crore.