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Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) has collected over Rs 230 crore premium for the Varishtha Pension Bima Yojana (VPBY) in the Uttar Pradesh region.
VPBY is an insurance scheme for senior citizens above 60 years of age and was launched on August 15, 2014. It provides for monthly pension ranging from Rs 500 to Rs 5,000.
UP region comprises the states of UP and Uttarakhand. The scheme closes on August 14, 2015.
"We have sold about 6,500 policies in the twin states and collected Rs 231 crore as premium with still 10 days to go before the scheme closes for subscription," LIC senior divisional manager Adiya Gupta told the media here.
Pan-India, VPBY has collected nearly Rs 3,160 crore as premium with over a lakh policies being subscribed so far, he informed.
VPBY reflected the commitment of the incumbent Narendra Modi government for the welfare of senior citizens, especially in light of the increasing longevity in India, which has gone up substantially in recent years, a finance ministry statement had said when the scheme was launched last year.
During its launch, the scheme was projected to build a large corpus of nearly Rs 10,000 crore, which now looks almost impossible to achieve.
In fact, the ambitious scheme was also not clubbed with the regular LIC policies for subscriptions and was kept off the annual sales targets.
Although, UP is the country's largest state in terms of population, the penetration of life insurance segment is still not deep and the general people are comparatively less inclined towards investing in life insurance and pension products compared to more progressive states like Maharashtra and Gujarat.
