Tamil Nadu - Madurai   

Recession affects LIC’s performance

MADURAI: Unfavourable capital market conditions combined with economic recession has depressed the performance of the country’s largest life insurer, Life Insurance Corporation of India, in the southern districts.

The Madurai division, comprising six districts, has recorded a negative growth of 12.5 per cent for the fiscal 2008-09 with respect to number of policies issued, Senior Divisional Manager, S. Chandrasekar, told The Hindu here on Monday.

The silver lining in this performance, he said, was that Madurai Division recorded the least negative growth among the eight divisions in Tamil Nadu.

While the targets for the fiscal was 5.49 lakh policies and Rs.765 crore in first premium, the division achieved 4.40 lakh policies (80.19 per cent) and raised Rs.372.16 crore (48.6 per cent). A huge dip in the issue of unit-linked insurance plans (ULIP) was a major reason.

Elaborating their importance, he said that in 2008-09, ULIPs constituted only 24.72 per cent of policies issued and yet comprised 57.31 per cent of the first premium raised. In the preceding fiscal, ULIPs constituted 64.7 per cent of policies issued and 93.1 per cent of the first premium raised.

Mr. Chandrasekar said that while the average minimum investment for conventional policies in the last fiscal was Rs.5,000, it was around Rs.10,000 for ULIPs.

As far as the performance of individual branches and satellite offices were concerned, he said that Tiruppattur and Virudhunagar branches achieved their targets for policies along with satellite offices at Theni, Usilampatti and Manamadurai.

In the last fiscal, the Madurai Division opened six satellite offices taking the total number to 11 along with 25 branches. Business through alternative channels such as bank offices and corporate outlets had also exceeded the targets.

In the current fiscal, two more satellite offices would be opened at Vedasandur and Kamuthi.

Outlining the measures taken to combat the downturn in business, he said that LIC was bringing out guaranteed addition products such as Jeevan Varsha. A meeting of all Senior Divisional Managers was scheduled in Mumbai by mid-May to chalk out a strategy.

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