The Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) is expecting to cross its targets in the number of policies sold and premium revenue this financial year.

T.C. Suseel Kumar, MD, LIC, told The Hindu here recently that the corporation was focusing this year on the number of policies sold and the strategy was working.

“We have fixed a target of selling 2.5 crore policies this year and first year premium collection of ₹56,500 crore.

“We have reached almost 60% in all the parameters. We will cross the target,” he said.

The corporation started the financial year with 74% share in life insurance policies and 66% in first-year premium income.

Now, it has 76% share in policies and 71% in premium. The market share grew well in September, October and November, especially the last two months. In November, a total of 40 lakh life policies were sold in the market and of them, 34 lakh was by the LIC.

Reviving lapsed policies

Regarding the campaign for revival of lapsed policies, Mr. Kumar said the LIC organised such campaigns regularly. This year, 22 lakh policies were revived during two months.

In the first quarter of the fiscal, LIC organised a series of training sessions for agents and planned similar sessions this month and the next month. This year, LIC had recruited one lakh new agents. Of the one lakh, almost 50% was in the age group of 30 to 35 years. “When you add young agents, they get young customers.” Till October this financial year, LIC had sold one crore policies this financial year and 42% of it was to customers who were less than 30 years of age.

On the potential for life insurance cover in India, he said of the 120 crore people, even if 70% was in the insurable age group, only about 40 crore people had cover.

So, the scope was huge, he said.