Best Indian Brands 2014: 'LIC has been a financial guardian angel'

I didn't even consider any private insurance brands ...it had to be only Life Insurance Corporation. It's like fill it, shut it and forget it. When you are investing in life, you would look for a life partner rather than somebody you are flirting with. It's always long term and that's why LIC.

I bought my first policy when I was 26, just four years into my first job. It's not that there were no options but it was an easy choice to make. The biggest reason to get life insurance is to ha .. 

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Profit & Loss of All Life Insurers for the year 2012-13

LIC agents more productive than their private sector counterparts

Productivity of the agency force is the key factor for boosting insurance sales. Agents of state-owned Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) are demonstrating that by outperforming their competition in the private sector.

According to the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA), the average number of policies sold by an agent of LIC was 29, almost 10 times that of his private sector counterpart.

That outselling has not been an aberration. It has been the trend for the last five years. LIC’s agents managed their outperformance last year too, when the life insurance business was on a slide.

What accounts for such a difference in the performance of agents selling relatively similar products?

P. Srinivasan, member of the chairman’s club of agents in LIC and president of the life insurance underwriters’ guild, explains, “The success of LIC is because they believe in direct distribution. Other companies depend on alternative channels.”

Elaborating, he said, “Only an agent, who is a family friend, can talk about death and the position of family members after death. You need to build a strong agency force that is recruited by a stable managerial force.”

According to A.K. Sahoo, Executive Director and Chief of South Central Zone of LIC, the DNA of the corporation is rooted in sales. “Right from the beginning, we are a sales driven force and accordingly put in place a system of incentives and encouragement, making agents members of different internal clubs depending on their performance,” he said.

LIC's claim settlement Better and Efficient than private insurers: BY IRDA

Private insurance companies fared poorly in terms of settlement of death claims in 2012-13 as compared to state-owned LIC (Life Insurance Corporation), says sectoral regulator Irda. "The claim settlement ratio of LIC was better than that of the private life insurers," Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority said in its annual report.

Life Insurance Corporation posted claim settlement ratio of 97.73 per cent last fiscal, as compared to 97.42 per cent in 2011-12.

For private insurers, the settlement ratio had gone down to 88.65 per cent in 2012-13, as compared to 89.34 per cent during the previous year, Irda said.It further revealed that private sector insurance firms have been rejecting about 8 per cent of the claims as against 1.12 per cent by the LIC.

According to Irda, there were 3.47 per cent claims sought from private insurance companies were pending at the end of the year. The similar figure for LIC was 1.04 per cent.There are about two dozen private life insurance firms in India and the larger ones include ICICI Prudential Life, HDFC Standard Life and Reliance Life.

The life insurance industry recorded a premium income of over Rs 2.87 lakh crore during 2012-13, up 0.05 per cent over the previous fiscal.

While private sector insurers posted 6.87 per cent decline in premium income, LIC recorded 2.92 per cent growth in 2012-13 compared to the previous fiscal.