Insurers eye more business after Government’s push for online sales

Private sector players also feel that they will have to explore if they need to come up with some common products for online and offline so as to provide identical products cheaper when sold online. Following the November 8-9 demonetisation, the government over the weekend asked public sector insurers to provide discounts of up to 10 per cent on the premium amount for general insurance policies and 8 per cent in new life policies of Life Insurance Corporation sold online. 

LIC sells only two policies online now – a term-policy ‘E-Term’ and a single-premium policy Jeevan Akshay. A senior Corporation official said that “even though we are yet to receive details from the government, we still believe that the move will give a push to digital sales of our two policies.” 

LIC could sell only 8,000 plans through its customer portal, out of the total of 2.6 crore policies sold by it last financial year, he said. Life insurers need the regulator IRDAI’s approval to sell online and therefore most of the products are not compatible for digital sales. So the Centre’s move will allow them to have a product that can be sold offline and online.