Life Insurance Trade Sluggish Due To Unpredictable Market

Observers of the life insurance industry have noted that a reduction in speed of growth is due to an incredibly unsteady market and also that it is more pronounced for public sector Life Insurance Corporation, and in response to what has been an incredibly stifled growth in March 2008 are predicting a far lower business premium growth for FY08. They believe the growth in the coming year will be around 35% rather than the previously hoped for 40-45%.

Standard profit from Ulips in the March 2008 quarter has been a negative 8-30 per cent. Several projects in the broader market have not worked particularly well, due to the Sensex down about 23 per cent during this time.

Market share by private life insurers has been boosted to almost 52 per cent in FY08 from 37 per cent in the previous year, with LIC yielding ground. The most impressive participants with it came to growth were Birla Sun Life and SBI Life, although the company keeping hold of the top spot seven years in a row was yet again ICICI Prudential, who had a profit of 310 basis points to 13.7 per cent of industry share. n