Industry News

Collective new business premium income of life insurance companies’ witnessed a 12.93% year-on-year growth to Rs 314,263 crore for the last financial year, from Rs 278,278 crore in the previous fiscal, backed by a rise in group single premium and group yearly renewable premium, data from Irdai showed on Monday.

The new business premium, or the first-year premium, of 23 private sector life insurance companies, posted a 22.74% Y-o-Y growth to Rs 115,503.12 crore for 2021-22, while IPO-bound LIC registered a 7.92% Y-o-Y increase to Rs 198,759.85 crore. Notably, for 2020-21, the life insurance sector’s first-year premium grew by 7.49%.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown and resultant impact, premiums were affected in FY21 and resultant different growth after the same, the base effect may also be possible in monthly FY22 numbers,” a note from CareEdge said.

LIC continues to maintain its dominant share in the first-year premium for FY22 (LIC share of 63.2% vs 36.8% share of private companies). The private sector has continued to gain market share, given that it has been growing at a faster pace compared to LIC,” CareEdge said in its note.

Among major insurers in the private sector, HDFC Standard Life posted a 20.05% y-o-y jump in new premium to Rs 24,301.07 crore for the last fiscal, while for ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, it was up by 15.37% to Rs 15,035.52 crore. SBI Life Insurance’s new business premium income was up 23.43% to Rs 25,458.29 crore, Bajaj Allianz Life was up by 44.72% to Rs 9,135.82 crore and Max Life jumped 15.78% to Rs 7,904.35 crore.

However, Future Generali witnessed a drop of 12.64% in the new year premium to Rs 456.97 crore for the last fiscal. Aegon Life was down by 73.02% to Rs 16.67 crore, according to the Irdai data.

The first-year premium of life insurers reported a robust y-o-y growth rate of 37.30% in March 2022 and reached Rs 59,608.98  crore. “The robust growth in monthly numbers can be attributed to an increase in single premiums for both individual and group segments in the last month of the financial year (with individuals undertaking tax planning measures), with LIC substantially outpacing its private peers for the second month in a row,” CareEdge said.