LIC's new plan for children
Jeevan Ankur the new launch of LIC which is specially designed for educational and other needs of children. A plan with profits is suitable for parents with children upto 17 years as it ensures that parents responsibilities are taken care of in all situations.

Drop in new premium
New premium income for life insurance policies showed drop in the first three quarters to 17%. If premium for group policies are excluded the drop is nearly 33%. Life insurers says that the drop is due to absence of pension plans from the life insurance market. Life Insurance Council's data says that in the last five years the share of pension plans varied from 20% to 40%. Under ULIPs pension plans policies sold well which facilitate the policyholders to channelize long term savings in equity.

Pension and life fund of GOI
Pension and Life Insurance Fund (PLIF) recently announced by Govt. Of India for Indian workers aboard. This scheme allows over five million workers especially working in West Asia, provides a low cost life insurance cover which encourage workers to save voluntarily for their later years.

Under this plan the Govt will contribute Rs.1000/- to Rs.12000/- per year. Women workers who join the plan will be paid an additional amount of Rs.1000/- per annum from Ministry of Overseas India Affairs. This meets a key pending demand of overseas workers.

Aviva Life's thurst in NE Region
Aviva Life planned to enter into the rural markets to increase their insurance penetration there. Eventhough the North-East market contributes more still the company feels that there is a potential growth there. There top performing branches are from North East. Avival Life is recruiting agents in Assam and other NE states to develop its distribution. It also focusing on increasing the agents productivity to give better service to the customers in this region.
Aviva India director, direct sales force Mr. Minish Sharda said, "We see a lot of potential for business in the North Eastern market. The dynamics of life insurance business have changed significantly with the increasing number of insurers. This has resulted in higher penetration in urban markets, including Tier 2 cities. Aviva plans to hire nearly 1000 high performing agents to increase insurance penetration for bringing a large section of underinsured population within the ambit of insurance protection in the region".

More branches closed by pvt. Life insurers
Private life insurers closed nearly 593 branches in 2010-11 whereas Life Insurance Corporation of India opened 121 new offices according the IRDA report. ICICI Prudential life who is the largest insurance co. alone closed 100 branches and the network of branches comes down to 1400 now. Mr. SB Mathur, secretary general, Life Insurance Council, told, “After the 2008 global financial meltdown, the new companies did not open or add branches aggressively. It is the bigger and older companies that had to downsize operations following the slowdown. Now, I think, the downsizing has reached a plateau and I hope to see no further contractions". He also said that for life insurance companies most of new business comes from agent network or through bancassurance channel.

IRDA Reports poor use of banks by LIC
LIC of India performed poorly in the banasssurance sector eventhough tied up with no.
of public sector banks, more than 150 brokers and corporate agents for distribution. According to IRDA annual report for 2010-11 LIC showed 97.45% of the new business premium came from its 13.37 lakh agents. Only 1.81 % of the new business premium came from Banks.
The country’s largest life insurer has a tie up with banks with a large branch network such as Corporation Bank, United Bank of India, Bank of Maharashtra and UCO Bank. In fact, LIC is also a large public shareholder in Corporation Bank holding 23.75 per cent as of end September, 2011. But the private insurance companies brought 46.89% from new business premium and 33.21% from Bancassurance.

IRDA annual report said “Over the years, there has been a shift away from the individual agency channel for the industry. The new business premium procured through individual agents has decreased to 78.95 per cent during 2010-11 from 79.61 per cent reported during the previous year. The share of corporate agents, which was 14.55 per cent during 2008-09 and 14.87 per cent during 2009-10, increased to 16.86 per cent in the year 2010-2011".

Kotak Mahindra Lifes' New ULIP
A new ULIP named Invest Maxima was announced by Kotak Mahindra Life.This ULIP offered varied investment options. It has no premium allocation charges with facility for single premium and regular premium options. Entry and exit ages are 0 to 60 years with 10 year maturity. This plan provides tax benefits also.

Fall in business for life insurers
There is a continuous decline in both premium income and policy sales for no. of insurance companies. During last calender year many private players like Aviva, Tata AIG, ING vysya, IDBI and Kotak Life launched different children education plans to increase the sale but not much result happens. During April to Nov 2011the new business premium income of life insurers reduced to 33.57% over the same period of previous year as per IRDA data. Individual policies sold by private insurers also shows a decline of 32% during the period.
The decline was due to misselling of ULIPs, policy holders are reported to have surrendered policies worth more than double the value of policies surrendered during last year.

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