Private insurance companies see first insurance premium rise 82% during April-January period.

The life coverage marketplace grew 18 per cent between January and April this year, but state-owned Life Insurance Corporation of Republic Of India (LIC) saw a dip in its insurance premium income from the sale of new policies.

Though LIC managed to better its place in January 2008, thanks to a 110 per cent rise in first insurance premium income, it could not do up for lost ground. January being the start of the busy season also saw private life insurance companies double their first insurance premium income to nearly Rs 3,522 crore as against Rs 1,734.66 crore in January 2007.

The diminution in LIC's new insurance premium income have seen its marketplace share driblet from 77 per cent in April-January 2007 to 64 per cent during the first 10 calendar months of the current fiscal year.

What contributed to the dip? The public sector giant did not pull off to bag the big-ticket communal coverage concern as it had managed to make in the past. As a result, its first insurance premium income from this section drop 9.4 per cent to Rs 6,582 crore during April-January this year.

At the same time, LIC managed to throw its land in the individual concern marketplace and its income from the sale of new policies in this section were estimated at Rs 34,042 crore during the 10-months ended January 2008, compared with Rs 33,851 crore during April-January 2007.

In contrast, the 16 private participants saw their first insurance premium income rise 82 per cent to Rs 22,504 crore, bolstered mainly by an 88 per cent rise in individual business, which touched Rs 20641.41 crore in the first 10 calendar months this year. In the grouping concern space, the private participants clocked a 34.2 per cent rise in first insurance premium income, which rose to Rs 1,862 crore.

The LIC direction looks hopeful of recovering more than lost land in February and March, the extremum season for life coverage sales.

"It's a dynamical marketplace and there are jump to be variations. In, January and February (the information is yet to be released), we have got done well in individual policies. In the last one-fourth of last year, we had generated Rs 11,000 crore concern and we anticipate more than concern in the last one-fourth of this twelvemonth too," said A Kelvin Sahoo, LIC's executive manager director in-charge of marketing.

A senior company executive, while acknowledging the loss of the large rente and tip concern relationships in grouping businesses, said LIC means to concentrate on regular insurance premium merchandises in individual business.

"Now, people have got started trusting the private participants also with their long-term savings. Better service offered by some of them have got also helped," said a senior executive director with a planetary consulting firm.

"The two parts of the narrative are indeed the high-base of former year's growing and LIC's size relation to the private participant but that doesn't acquire us to any of the solution. It is now critical that LIC makes even more than on customer-centric measurements that output better growth: better client cleavage and de-averaged sales-force management could well be two of import keys to tackling this puzzle," said Nikhil Ojha, managing spouse at Monitor India.