Sales of health and pension policies of life insurance companies have taken a beating in June, according to the latest data released by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA).
The insurance regulator has segregated the figures for the life insurance players into four categories -- individual single premium, individual non-single premium, group single premium and group new business-non-single premium.
According to the data, there have been only 13 non-linked health policies in individual single premium in June 2012, compared with 60 policies in the same period last year.
Linked health policies for the same period dropped to 14 in June 2012, compared with 105 in June 2011. Both the above figures are for without-profit sub-category. The with-profit category figures stood at zero.
Even in the individual non-single premium category, there was a 53 per cent drop in health insurance premium (without profit) for March 2012, compared with the figures a year ago in the non-linked category. In the linked category, the same fell by 36.8 per cent to 8,705 policies in March 2012, compared with 13,780 policies in March 2011.
Industry players said the change in portfolio strategy with less focus on health has been one of the reason why the health insurance policies have come down.
"Over the years, life insurance players are making an attempt to significantly reduce their health portfolio, due to the complexities of health insurance as a whole. This explains the drop in premium numbers on a year-on-year
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