Buying insurance cover continues to remain skewed to the last quarter of the fiscal and insurance companies are gearing up their capacities to face the year end load that takes off from January 1 till the end of the fourth quarter.
This year with the number of tax payers rising almost four fold from eight million in 1997 to the present 31 million, insurance companies anticipate sizeable business coming through in the last three months of the year.
HDFC Standard Life Insurance has recruited 70 per cent more employees in the last six months, and more than doubled its processing capacity to take care of year end volumes. SBI Life Insurance is looking at the option of hiring temporary staff.
ICICI Prudential Life Insurance intends to redeploy existing staff to departments that require additional manpower. And the big brother, the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) is doing it no differently.
Says LIC chairman S B Mathur:
