Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Thursday, Jul 25, 2002
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Thursday, Jul 25, 2002 |
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Industry & Economy
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Rural Development Money & Banking - Life Insurance LIC wooing villagers through `Bima Grams' Our Correspondent
MADURAI, July 24 THE Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India has started developing `Bima Grams', indicative of its social commitment under which the organisation ploughed back a portion of the premium collected from the villagers for the development of respective villages. Addressing presspersons on the occasion of the launch of a new policy, `Jeevan Rekha', here, the Senior Divisional Manager, Mr B. Venugopal, said the first `Bima Gram' in the southern districts, and the second in the State, came into existence at Kothapatti village near Andipatti in Theni district recently. The LIC paid back 25 per cent of the premium collected from the village or Rs 25,000, whichever was less, for undertaking development work. The norms for identifying a village as `Bima Gram' included a population of over 1000 but below 5000, life insurance coverage for at least one person in 75 per cent of the households and acquisition of 100 new policies in a single year, he said. In Kothapatti, he continued, Rs 25,000 had been given for undertaking repairs in a borewell. The second `Bima Gram' would be Govindanagaram in Theni district. Mr Venugopal said 100 villages had been identified in Tamil Nadu and Kerala for launching the scheme. Claiming that the customer-friendly measures introduced by the LIC in the last few years had helped to face the challenge from the private sector and also improve business effectively, Mr Venugopal said they had achieved a growth rate of 137 per cent in the last financial year. While the 12 private insurance companies sold three lakh policies during 2001-02, the Howrah Division of the LIC alone achieved a sales of six lakh policies. New policies sold in the Madurai Division, comprising six districts, amounted to 2.53 lakhs. In the first quarter of the current financial year, 44,422 policies had been sold in the division, a growth rate of 20 per cent over the performance during the same period last year. The target for the division has been set at 2.91 lakh policies, he added. Mr Venugopal further said that Ramanathapuram and Palani would soon be brought under the LIC's Metro Area Network and more services would be added to the existing `single window' system. A new `green channel' system had been introduced in all the 25 branches in the division that enabled the issue of policies across the counter. He said a special campaign would be launched in the Madurai Division in August to revive lapsed policies that stood at 18 per cent, against the all-India average of 16 per cent. A `customer contact campaign' was currently on from July 1 to get feedback on the services provided by the LIC. The pattern of the products of the LIC was undergoing a change to suit the needs of the people and the `Jeevan Rekha' policy reflected this trend by combining moneyback and whole life aspects. Efforts were on to bring the ratio of lapsed policies to 15 per cent in the division, he added.
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