Currently there are 24 Life Insurance companies licensed and operating in India. Due to its prolonged monopolistic presence in the sector, Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) has the largest market share. As per the new business figures (Individual) of FY 2010-11, around 63% of the new business premiums is collected by LIC followed by ICICI Prudential 6.6%, SBI Life 5.8%, HDFC Standard 4.2%, Reliance Life 3.2%. The remaining market share of 17% is shared by 18 life insurers.
On the group front, LIC collected new business premiums of Rs. 34,241 Crores which constitutes around 79% of the total group premiums in the industry. The next in line were SBI Life 6.5%, ICICI Prudential 5.7%, Bajaj Allianz 2% and HDFC standard Life 1.3%.
The market share is steeply skewed in favour of LIC. This indicates that not only LIC is the major player in the sector, it still manages to maintain the confidence of the policyholders. Further the government backed entity has a responsibility to service a large populace in the years to come. This was one of the reasons why the Finance Ministry and the IRDA Chairman were keen on increasing private participation in the pension / annuities sector. Let’s talk about it sometime later.
I want to draw your attention to one more important point. In spite of the opening of the life insurance ten years back, the private players are still struggling to garner investors/policy holders’ confidence. The figures show it quite right. Only 17% is shared by 18 life insurance companies!!
The life insurance industry is still in its nascent stage of evolution. There are many more initiatives and policies being designed to increase customer satisfaction.
