New launching, product will also be available in the online version, which will be cheaper.

HINDU BUSINESSLINE<MUMBAI, FEB 1:  

Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), the country’s largest life insurer, announced the launch of its own insurance repository LIC E-services on Monday.

Chairman SK Roy said that for policies sold online, the policy bond will be hosted on the E-services portal but other policyholders can also register on the portal, which will be free of cost for the policyholder.

Services, such as status of policy, bonus, loans, and claims will be available to customers registered with the portal.

The portal will ensure access to policy-related information as well as payment anytime and anywhere.

Cheaper to buy online

The LIC chief said his company has decided that for any new product that the company will be launching, the product will also be available in the online version, which will be cheaper.

“The premiums would be lower than offline products because there will be no intermediation costs and the benefit of that will be passed on the policyholders,” he said.

As for the impact of selling products online on its agency force, which stands at over 12 lakh, Roy said: “While we have come out with a modern customer-centric initiative, we have to ensure that our agents take advantage of this system. We will be working on that.”

Challenging fiscal

Roy observed that in terms of operations, the current fiscal year has been challenging for LIC. He said: “We are seeing green shoots. In December, we grew faster than the industry as per Life Insurance Council data.

“Our performance has further improved in January with a near double-digits growth rate. We are confident that the corporation will do well in the remaining months of the fiscal and achieve our new business premium collection target of ₹31,000 crore.”

Investment gains

On the investments front, LIC has been focusing on the equity markets. Its investments crossed ₹53,000 crore in the current fiscal, against ₹39,000 crore last fiscal. The company has also booked income on investment, which stood at around ₹10,000 crore this year.

Roy said the company has been actively investing in, apart from banking, sectors such as IT, pharma and FMCG.

On rising non-performing assets (NPAs) in the banking sector, he said that the entire system is concerned about NPAs but the Corporation will continue participating in bond issues of public sector banks to shore up their tier-II capital on a case-to-case basis.

(This article was published on February 1, 2016)