Life insurance companies reported a robust 84.2% increase in first-year premium to ₹17,939.62 crore for April on the back of a good show by market leader, the Life Insurance Corporation of India.
For LIC, the first-year premium rose 141.3% at ₹11,716.70 crore (₹4,856.76 crore), a development that is bound to bring cheer for the behemoth ahead of the listing of its shares.
Private life insurers logged a 27.5% growth in total first-year premium (FYP) to ₹6,222.92 crore, the new business statement for the 24 insurers issued by IRDAI showed. Of the 22 operational private firms, six reported a decline in the FYP.
Emkay Global said in a research report that a three-year compound annual growth rate would present a true picture of expansion, considering a stringent nationwide lockdown in April 2020 and the impact of the COVID-19 Delta wave in April last year. On a three-year CAGR basis, private life insurers delivered RWRP (retail weighted received premium) growth of 18% as against 5% for LIC.
The year-on-year growth will start to normalise from the second quarter of this financial year, once the favourable base effect goes away. Additionally, April is a relatively leaner month for life insurers, so extrapolating the numbers for the month to the full year would not be correct, it pointed out in the report.
