Thomas Mathew T, managing director, tells Manojit Saha and M Saraswathy about the insurer's strategy and growth plans.
Edited excerpts:
Growth in new business premiums is in single digit this financial year. What kind of growth do you see in LIC's NBP this financial year?
We have 81 per cent of the market share in terms of policies and 75 per cent in policies.
The other 23 private life insurance companies have a 19 per cent combined market share of policies.
The next two quarters will be good for the industry and LIC because of the seasonality of the business.
About 60 per cent of the business for this year came from the last two two quarters alone. LIC has filed for some new products, which we expect to launch by early January.
Also, there is a good sentiment in the economy and the stock market is looking up.
We have set a target of Rs 45,000 crore (Rs 450 billion) premium for the current year in individual segment and want to sell 43 million policies.
We expect a 20 per cent growth in premium income, year-on-year.
Since the sentiment is good now, would unit-linked plans be back in the industry and in your portfolio?
During the heydays, Ulips had gone up to 80-90 per cent of business for private life insurers.
It has now come down. Insurers are focusing on non-Ulip, long-term, non-single premium product. We have always been concentrating on traditional products, so we were not affected.
Thanks to the good market sentiment, once Ulips come back to the market, it should pick up.
Not to those high levels, but in terms of what is required for the market.
LIC has made a comeback from the pre-2008 levels, where it was losing market share to private players. . .
We have come back very aggressively.
In fact, our market share had gone down to 60 per cent. We have steadily increased it to 81 per cent. It will still go up.
We have launched Vision 2020, where we want that by 2020, every insurable person has a policy in his/her
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