LIC expands market share as pvt insurers lose ground

Helped by single-premium plans and continued consumer preference for endowment and money-back policies, the country's largest insurer LIC has come back in a big way and captured 46.8 per cent share in India's insurance market in terms of annualised premium equivalent (APE) in August.

APE is the sum of annualised first-year premiums on regular premium policies and 10% of single premiums on the new business written during any period.

According to a sector report from Emkay Global Financial Services, the share of private players on the APE basis weakened the sequential improvement, with the LIC bouncing back big time with 46.8 per cent share (49.2 per cent in July) against the peak of 60.2 per cent in February.

While private sector has seen a decline in APE, LIC has shown improvement as it has smaller share of volatile ULIP products.

In August, private players recorded an 8.3 per cent YoY decline in APE, compared to 0.3 per cent rise in July. Retail APE for private players fell 5.8 per cent (vs 7.1 per cent decline in July). Group APE also witnessed a weak performance with a 20 per cent decline YoY (compared with 50.3 per cent increase in July 2020), the Emkay report said.

"After a near V-shaped recovery in Jun-Jul'20, the trend was seen plateauing in Aug'20 with weak sequentially numbers amid tapering pent-up demand," the report said.

On an overall basis, the share of retail APE stood at 54.4 per cent as against 61.6 per cent in Feb'20, whereas the share of group APE was volatile and came in at 25.5 per cent as against 57.5 per cent in Feb'20.

The LIC has reported relatively strong numbers with a 7.2 per cent increase YoY in APE after six quarters. Retail APE grew by 2.1 per cent YoY to Rs 27 billion. The new business profit (NBP) increased by 15.2 per cent YoY to Rs 197 billion. Policy sales dipped 24.1 per cent YoY, while the ticket size witnessed growth of 43.8 per cent YoY in the same period.