Life insurers post 22.91% growth in Q1 new business premium

Driven by a strong demand for enhanced insurance protection from individual consumers, new policy issuances increased by 12.13 per cent on a Y-o-Y basis in the month of June, resulting in the addition of new 21.79 lakh policies as against 19.43 lakh policies in the year ago period.

“This strong performance can be ascribed to the fact that life insurers are increasingly focusing on encouraging first-time life insurance buyers to buy essential life insurance solutions, contributing to the 14.93 per cent growth in combined individual premium collections for the month of June and 18.25 per cent growth on a YTD basis,” it said.

In the group policy segment, single premiums grew by 13.49 per cent with monthly collections coming in at Rs 28,711 crore. In fact, the group policy category witnessed a 14.75 per cent growth in premiums collected in June while new policy issuances expanded by 6.73 per cent on a Y-o-Y basis, it said.

“The life insurance industry in India has been making significant strides forward by expanding access to insurance and making an effort to reach out to areas and segments of the country’s population that were previously underserved when it comes to their insurance needs,” the council said. Towards this end, life insurers added more than 2,19,820 individual life insurance agents, with an overall 1.20 per cent growth in cumulative agent count, it said.

“Still, the sustained pace of agent addition is being complimented by the high speed of digitisation by life insurers, paving the way for additional gains in insurance penetration that should provide a significant boost to new business premiums in FY25 and beyond,” the council said.