KOLKATA: The eighteen life insurance companies had a good time in the last fiscal year, clocking new business premium of almost Rs 93,000 crore. However, with cut-throat competition and a host of new players waiting to step in, the current fiscal will be a lot tougher.
No wonder, many of the existing players are chalking out expansion plans, upping agency force, devising new strategies and creating niche customer segments to outwit each other.
DNA Money spoke to some players to gauge their business plans for the current year.
The Life Insurance Corporation, the public sector giant, is going for a change in strategy this year. It will reposition some of its plans like Jeevan Anand, Jeevan Tarang, Jeevan Saral more aggressively this year. Having sold 8.5 lakh micro insurance products, the company has budgeted 10% business from this category alone.
D K Mehrotra, managing director, LIC, said, “We’ve projected a 30% growth in premium and a 15.7% growth in policies this year. The intention is to bring down the Ulip to non-Ulip ratio to a reasonable mix of 70:30 this year.”
SBI Life is planning a massive expansion in tier 4 towns and is lining up a slew of health insurance plans and micro insurance products.
U S Roy, managing director and CEO, SBI Life Insurance, said, “We have done almost Rs 1,600 crore of premium in 2007-08 in bancassurance and plan to up our bancassurance premium to 50% in the coming years”.
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