Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of death claims reported to Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC ) in FY21 surged to its highest-ever level in at least five years at over 11 lakh.

Claims settled

State-run LIC received 11.42 lakh death claims in 2020-21 and settled 11.47 lakh claims, including the pending ones from the previous year. It paid a total of ₹24,195.01 crore for death claims in FY21.

The data, however, does not specify how many death claims were related to the pandemic. This was a 17.1 per cent jump in the number of death claims reported to LIC in FY20 at 9.75 lakh. In all, it had settled 9.32 lakh death claims in FY20, and paid out ₹17,419.57 crore.

The number of death claims reported to the insurer has been steadily declining in the last five years at least, when 10.5 lakh death claims were reported in FY17. It was expected that death claims for LIC would have spiked in the quarter ended June 30, 2021, when the second wave of the pandemic hit the country.

Most private sector life insurers had reported at least a two-fold increase in death claims in the first quarter of the fiscal, attributing it to the pandemic. However, similar data is not available in the case of LIC at present.

“LIC is the dominant player in the life insurance sector, and it was expected that like the rest of the industry, it, too, would have seen a sharp rise in claims in the first quarter of the fiscal with the second wave of the pandemic. Some of the death claims may be reported with a lag by the survivors of policyholders, and could be reported in later quarters by LIC,” said an industry expert who did not wish to be named on the issue.

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