Private life insurers' spoils at 12%

The twelve private life insurance players in the country have carved out a market share of 11.79 per cent of the Rs 9,713 crore first-premium income collected by the industry during the first nine months of the current fiscal.

The market share of the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) declined by 0.38 per cent to 88.21 per cent during the period.

The private life insurers wrote Rs 1,145 crore in first-premium income during the period under consideration, while the LIC wrote Rs 8,568 crore.

Additionally, the LIC issued 2.27 lakh policies of Varishtha Bima Pension Yojana which fetched a premium income of Rs 4,124.74 crore.

In terms of number of policies, the market share of the private players stood at 6.01 per cent with 9.17 lakh policies, while LIC's share declined by 0.15 per cent with 1.43 crore policies.

Among the private insurers, ICICI Prudential continued be in the vanguard with 3.9 per cent market share in terms of premium income (Rs 378.5 crore) and 1.36 per cent share in number of policies (2.07 lakh policies).

In terms of number of lives covered under the group schemes, SBI Life is leading with 4.73 lakh lives, which is 13.38 per cent of the total lives covered under the group schemes by the life insurers during the first nine months.

In case of general insurers, the premiums underwritten were up by 13 per cent to Rs 11,930 crore during the first nine months of this fiscal compared with Rs 10,577 crore in the year-ago period.

Public sector general insurers garnered a market share of 86.12 per cent with Rs 10,274.5 crore of premiums underwritten.

Among the state-run general insurers, National Insurance Company has had a 20 per cent growth in premium income at Rs 2,526 crore.

Among the private general insurers, HDFC Chubb's premium income grew 35-fold on year-on-year basis to Rs 71.5 crore from Rs 2.2 crore previously.