Driven by robust sales of single-premium annuity plan Jeevan Akshay ahead of its reduction in the annual returns from the policy, the national insurer LIC has registered over fourfold jump in growth in the overall premium collections in November at Rs 7,200 crore. Life Insurance Corporation registered total premium income of Rs 7,200 crore in November, up from Rs 1,740 crore a year ago, thus showing a growth of more than 300 percent on year-on-year basis, a senior LIC official told PTI today. Last month, the corporation had announced that the annual average returns from Jeevan Akshay would be reduced by 50 bps to 7 per cent from December 1 due to the general falling in the interest rates as a fallout of the demonetisation drive. It worked as a trigger as there was a gold rush among the investors to buy the retirement plan, the official said. He said the life giant recorded a cumulative sales growth of this policy alone at over 100 per cent in terms of both number of policies and premium income as well during the April-November period. The corporation sold 2.72 lakh single premium policies between April and November, while for the entire fiscal year of 2016, it could sell only 1.03 lakh policies. However, when seen in the total number of policies sold by LIC during the year until November, it was almost flat at 1.06 crore, up from 1.04 crore a year ago. In value terms, its premium income during the reporting period stood at Rs 24,000 crore, out of which as much as Rs 17,000 crore came from various single-premium policies. Again, out of this Rs 17,000 crore as much as Rs 12,500 crore was contributed by Jeevan Akshay alone, the official said. In contrast, the contribution from the Jeevan Akshay policy was merely at Rs 5,400 crore for the entire fiscal year of 2016. Overall, LIC had earned premium income worth Rs 11,700 crore last year until November. Till October growth in its sale was only 62 percent, the official added. In terms of average ticket size of single premium policy, it more than doubled to Rs 23,000 from Rs 11,000 a year ago, the official added.
