New life insurance premium grows 26% to Rs. 1.75 Lk crore

Life insurance firms in the country collected Rs 1,75,022.50 crore as premium from new policies in 2016-17, registering a growth of 26.2 per cent even as the total number of policies declined.

Insurance companies had collected Rs 1,38,657.31 crore in 2015-16, according to data from the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai).

Interestingly, number of policies insured in the last fiscal fell to 2,64,56,645 from 2,67,40,088 in 2015-16, indicating high value policies subscribed by policyholders. Life insurance industry in India is the largest in the world with about 36 crore policies currently. There are 24 life insurance players in the country. LIC is the only state-owned life insurer, while rest are from the private sector. Insurance behemoth LIC collected the highest premium of Rs 1,24,396.27 crore (71 per cent of total premium) during 2016-17, up 27.4 per cent from a year ago, data showed. Rest 23 private sector players' new premium grew by 23.5 per cent to Rs 50,626.23 crore.