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Life Insurance Council has released updated industry business numbers for the month of May 2024. Amongst several key highlights, new business premiums (NBPs) underwritten by Indian life insurers has achieved a robust Y-o-Y growth of 15.15% in the month of May 2024, with YTD figures recording a 31.2% growth over the same period last year. New business premiums expanded from Rs 23,448 Crs in May 2023 to Rs 27,034 Crs in May’24, with YTD collections growing even more from Rs 36,043 Crs to Rs 47,293 Crs this year. Driven by a strong demand for enhanced insurance protection from individual consumers, new policy issuances too increased by 12.45% on a Y-o-Y basis in May’24, resulting in the addition of new 18,68,096 policies vis-à-vis 16,61,324 policies in the year ago period

According to data released by the Life Insurance Council, the life insurance industry saw individual single premiums growing by 18.3% on a Y-o-Y basis to close at Rs 3,351 Crs for May’24 while YTD growth stood at 21.49%. Individual non-single premiums came in at Rs 6,916 Crs and grew by 18.7% in May’24, even as YTD collections settled at 20.14% 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 18.58% growth in combined individual premium collections for the month of May’24 and 20.6% growth on a YTD basis. In the Group policy segment, single premiums grew by 16.7% with monthly collections coming in at Rs15,976 Crs. In fact, the Group policy category witnessed a 13.15% growth in premiums collected in May’24 while new policy issuances expanded by 21.15% 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 1,30,000 individual life insurance agents, even as they had to contend with an overall 0.2% drop in cumulative agent count due to attrition. Still, the sustained pace of agent addition is being complimented by the high speed of digitisation 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.

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