New retirement plan from Reliance Life

Reliance Life Insurance Company launched a non-linked pension plan named “Reliance Life Traditional Golden Years Plan”. This is the first traditional retirement plan which assures advance guaranteed returns on investments. This is designed to help the policyholders to save systematically.

Aegon Religare Life aims high growth

Aegon Religare Life Insurance is aiming to increase the total received premium this year to Rs.500 crore against Rs.166 crore achieved in the previous year. Mr. Yatheesh Srivastava, Chief Marketing Manager said that to attain this target, the company plans to expand its branch network, add more relationship managers and life advisors in the south. It also is focusing on acquiring a bank partner for third party distribution backed by developing new product lines and enhances the integrated customer management strategy.

The company also plans to increase the life advisors to 20000 and to hire more than 800 relationship managers. The branches totaling 56 will double their sales force.

LIC becomes Registrar for UID

LIC signed an MOU with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to operate as a registrar for delivering the unique 12-digit identity numbers to customers and becoming the first institution other than the State government to tie up with UIDAI. The UID is helpful to Indian residents to establish their identity for various activities based on demographic and biometric data. (Photograph and fingerprints) and iris scan of an individual to prevent duplication.

Mr. T. S. Vijay an, LIC Chairman said, “LIC will be able to uniquely identify its customers thereby enhancing its efficiency in service delivery and achieving a high level of effectiveness in various operations. We know how to contact people and that is our strength. With over 14 lakh agents last year, we covered over six crore lives selling 3.88 crore new policies.''

Reliance Life launched “Mobinsure”

Reliance Life has started a mobile portal named ‘Mobinsure’ which offers a range of insurance related services on mobile phones. Policyholders can easily know the status of the policies and premiums, to switch over funds, to pay policy premium and to resolve queries using their web enabled mobiles. The service is free of cost and available for all users of CDMA and GSM platforms.

Mr. Malay Ghosh, president, Reliance Life Insurance said, “With Mobinsure, most features of internet insurance will now be available on mobile phones, providing a breakthrough improvement in insurance services. Besides easy access and anytime anywhere insurance, the novel application offers complete services and security to customers transacting on their mobile phones,”

ULIPs exit loss reduced by IRDA

Exiting ULIPs between 5 and 9 years will be beneficial due to IRDA’s revised guidelines, which increased minimum lock-in period from 3 years to 5 years. Last year in July IRDA capped charges on ULIPs.

LIC to increase its bancassurance mode

Life Insurance Corporation of India is expected to increase their business with its bancassurance partners under new regulations which insist the companies to pay less commission to distributors. Presently the corporation has a tie-up with Laxmi Vilas Bank which was earlier tied up with private sector insurance Co. Aviva. Now LIC is negotiating another tie-up with Vijaya Bank. LIC is having the opinion that it is a good choice with the state-owned bank which has a similar culture.

Performance of Life Insurance Industry – 2009-10

Mr. S B Mathur, Secretary General, Life Insurance Council announced the performance of the Insurance sector. In year 2009-10, new business premium increased by 25% and renewal premium rose by 12.63%. Total premium income rose 18% at Rs.2,61,025 crore. The total premium income may cross Rs.3 lakh crore in the financial year 2010-11. He further said, “We believe that if India has to become an economic power, growth has to be inclusive.

Taking this into consideration, life insurance companies have been adhering to rural and social sector obligation by covering more than 1.93 crore lives in social sector in FY08-09. Life companies have also sold more than 2.8 crore policies in rural areas in FY08 and FY09.
The life insurance industry employs 2.68 lakh people directly and has about 30 lakh agents. Life Insurance industry has thus reinforced its goal to make available, the best of the Insurance solution to policy holders across the country.”

Speaking about the product structure Mr. Mathur said that the current mix between ULIPs and traditional products is at 80:20 ratio

Life Insurers may invest in infrastructure debt fund

Insurers now can invest in the proposed India Infrastructure Debt Fund as per the Insurance Regulatory & Development Authority’s decision in this regard. Mr. R.K. Nair, IRDA member (finance and investment) said, “We found the Deepak Parekh Committee recommendations favourable for insurers and have forwarded our views to the government. The Deepak Parekh committee has recommended that insurance companies can invest in the proposed India Infrastructure Debt Fund,”

Insurers have not invested in any of the Greenfield infrastructure projects. As a long-term financial investment this will help the insurance companies to develop their annuity business.

Shriram Life target expansion

Shriram Life is now targeting to become a pan-India player in the life insurance sector also while improving their share in the non-life sector. Shriram Group and Sanlam of South Africa having separate JV for life and non-life insurance .Shriram Life Insurance Co. their life business has shown profit in the first three years. Ms. Akhila Srinivasan, MD of the Shriram life said, “We are not going to make profit in the fourth and fifth year.”

She said that they would focus on strong presence in other regions like north, west, and east to compete as a pan-India player. As Sanlam has an expertise in various product segments, the prime responsibility of developing the market in other regions has been given to them.

The company is expecting cumulative new business premium of Rs.1900 crore in the current financial year 2010-11. The company has achieved 33% growth in new business premium compared to the previous year.

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