The country’s largest insurer Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) is targeting a 13 per cent growth in new business premium collection at ₹32,000 crore this fiscal, said a senior official.
During 2014-15, LIC registered a total new business premium collection of ₹28,000 crore.
The State-run insurer is seeing a decline in its individual new business premium collection.
According to data released by the insurance regulator, LIC’s premium from sale of new policies in the first half of FY16 dropped 24 per cent to ₹11,868 crore from ₹15,519 crore in the first half of FY15.
The official said that the key reason for the decline in new business premium collection in the individual category is the discontinuation of the Varishtha Pension Bima Yojana scheme this year.
Also, the introduction of tax deducted at source for life insurance policies at 2 per cent in last year’s Budget, which came into effect from October 2014, has dampened sales, said the official.
However, on an overall basis (group and individual), LIC saw new premium collections rise 10 per cent to ₹39,161.78 crore in the first six months of the current fiscal due to a big jump in group premium collections, where the State-owned insurer continues to be dominant.
A senior official from LIC said that the company is on a major recruitment drive for agents and plans to hire over two lakh agents this year to address the fall in new business premium collection.
“We feel we need to focus more on agency recruitment as last year we saw a decline in our overall agency force. We are looking at 85 per cent of our business coming from our agency force this year,” said the official.