Indian Life Insurers Register Record New Business Figures In October 2024

• New business premium collections grow by 13.16% in the month of Oct ’24 as compared to the same month last year, buoyed by robust demand for enhanced insurance protection from both individual and corporate consumers.
• New policy issuance de-grows 41.6% for the same period, highlighting the current life insurance demand consolidation and concurrent shift towards products offering higher levels on insurance protection.

Life Insurance Council has released updated industry business numbers for the month of October 2024. Amongst several key highlights, new business premiums (NBPs) underwritten by Indian life insurers has achieved a robust Y-o-Y growth of 13.16% in the month of Oct’24, with YTD figures recording a 18.56% growth over the same period last year. New business premiums expanded from ₹26819.01 Crs in Oct 2023 to ₹30347.6 Crs in Oct 2024, with YTD collections growing even more from ₹185195.81 Crs to ₹219561.64 Crs this year. Despite the underlying demand for enhanced insurance protection from both individual consumers and corporate clients alike, new policy issuances decreased by 41.6% to 12,01,214 in October’24 as compared with 20,56,928 policies sold in the same corresponding period last year.

According to data released by the Life Insurance Council, the life insurance industry saw individual single premiums growing by 8.60% on a Y-o-Y basis to close at ₹3397.07 Crs for Oct’24 while YTD growth stood at 14.16%. Individual non-single premiums came in at ₹7453.5 Crs and grew by 2.76% in Oct’24, even as YTD collections settled at 18.23% higher than the corresponding period last year. This strong performance can be ascribed to the fact that life insurers are increasingly focusing on encouraging first-time life insurance buyers to buy essential life insurance solutions, contributing to the 4.52% growth in combined individual premium collections for the month of Oct’24 and 16.89% growth on a YTD basis. In the Group policy segment, single premiums grew by 15.81% with monthly collections coming in at ₹18258.37Crs. In fact, the Group policy category witnessed a 18.61% growth in premiums collected in Oct’24 while new policy issuances expanded by 2.70% on a Y-o-Y basis.

The life insurance industry in India has been making significant strides forward by expanding access to insurance and making an effort to reach out to areas and segments of the country’s population that were previously underserved when it comes to their insurance needs. Towards this end, life insurers added more than 5,82,565 individual life insurance agents, with an overall 2.64% growth in cumulative agent count. Still, the sustained pace of agent addition is being complimented by the high speed of digitization by life insurers, paving the way for additional gains in insurance penetration that should provide a significant boost to new business premiums in FY25 and beyond.