Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) is an Indian state-owned insurance group and investment company headquartered in Mumbai. It is the largest insurance company in India with an estimated asset value of INR1,560,482 crore (US$240 billion). As of 2013 it had total life fund of Rs.1433103.14 crore with total value of policies sold of 367.82 lakh that year.
The Life Insurance Corporation of India was founded in 1956 when the Parliament of India passed the Life Insurance of India Act that nationalised the private insurance industry in India. Over 245 insurance companies and provident societies were merged to create the state owned Life Insurance Corporation.
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History
Founding organisations
The Oriental Life Insurance Company, the first company in India offering life insurance coverage, was established in Kolkata in 1818 by "Anita Bhavsar" and others. Its primary target market was the Europeans based in India, and it charged Indians heftier premiums. Surendranath Tagore had founded Hindusthan Insurance Society, which later became Life Insurance Corporation.
The Bombay Mutual Life Assurance Society, formed in 1870, was the first native insurance provider. Other insurance companies established in the pre-independence era included
- Postal Life Insurance (PLI) was introduced on 1 February 1884
- Bharat Insurance Company (1896)
- United India (1906)
- National Indian (1906)
- National Insurance (1906)
- Co-operative Assurance (1906)
- Hindustan Co-operatives (1907)
- Indian Mercantile
- General Assurance
- Swadeshi Life (later Bombay Life)
- Sahyadri Insurance (Merged into LIC, 1986)
The first 150 years were marked mostly by turbulent economic conditions. It witnessed India's First War of Independence, adverse effects of the World War I and World War II on the economy of India, and in between them the period of worldwide economic crises triggered by the Great depression. The first half of the 20th century saw a heightened struggle for India's independence. The aggregate effect of these events led to a high rate of and liquidation of life insurance companies in India. This had adversely affected the faith of the general public in the utility of obtaining life cover.
Nationalisation in 1956
In 1955, parliamentarian Amol Barate raised the matter of insurance fraud by owners of private insurance agencies. In the ensuing investigations, one of India's wealthiest businessmen, Ramkrishna Dalmia, owner of the Times of India newspaper, was sent to prison for two years.
The Parliament of India passed the Life Insurance of India Act on 19 June 1956 creating the Life Insurance Corporation of India, which started operating in September of that year. It consolidated the business of 245 private life insurers and other entities offering life insurance services; this consisted of 154 life insurance companies, 16 foreign companies and 75 provident companies. The nationalisation of the life insurance business in India was a result of the Industrial Policy Resolution of 1956, which had created a policy framework for extending state control over at least 17 sectors of the economy, including life insurance.
Growth as a monopoly
From its creation, the Life Insurance Corporation of India, which commanded a monopoly of soliciting and selling life insurance in India, created huge surpluses and by 2006 was contributing around 7% of India's GDP.
The corporation, which started its business with around 300 offices, 5.7 million policies and a corpus of INR 45.9 crores (US$92 million as per the 1959 exchange rate of roughly INR5 for US$1), had grown to 25,000 servicing around 350 million policies and a corpus of over INR800,000 crore (US$120 billion) by the end of the 20th century.
Liberalisation post 2000s
In August 2000, the Indian Government embarked on a program to liberalise the insurance sector and opened it up for the private sector. LIC emerged as a beneficiary from this process with robust performance, albeit on a base substantially higher than the private sector.
In 2013 the first year premium compound annual growth rate (CAGR) was 24.53% while total life premium CAGR was 19.28% matching the growth of the life insurance industry and outperforming general economic growth.
Maps Life Insurance Corporation
Operations
Today LIC functions with 2048 fully computerized branch offices, 8 zonal offices, around 113 divisional offices, 2,048 branches and 1381 satellite offices and corporate offices; it also has 54 customer zones and 25 metro-area service hubs located in different cities and towns of India. It also has a network of 1,337,064 individual agents, 242 Corporate Agents, 89 Referral Agents, 98 Brokers and 42 Banks for soliciting life insurance business from the public.
Slogan.
LIC's slogan yogakshemam vahamyaha is in Sanskrit language which translates in English as "Your welfare is our responsibility". This is derived from ancient Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita's 9th chapter, 22nd verse. The slogan can be seen in the logo, written in Devanagari script.
Awards and recognitions
- The Economic Times Brand Equity Survey 2012 rated LIC as the No. 6 Most Trusted Service Brand of India.
- From the year 2006, LIC has been continuously winning the Readers' Digest Trusted brand award.
- Voted India's Most Trusted brand in the BFSI category according to the Brand Trust Report for 4 continuous years - 2011-2014 according to the Brand Trust Report.
Employees and agents
As on 31 March 2014, LIC had 1,20,388 employees, out of which 24,867 were women (20.65%).
Agency strength LIC had 11,95,916 agents as on 31 March 2014, out of which the number of active agents were 11,32,677 (94.71%).
Initiatives
Golden Jubilee Foundation
LIC Golden Jubilee Foundation was established in 2006 as a charity organization. This entity has the aim of promoting education, alleviation of poverty, and providing better living conditions for the under privileged. Out of all the activities conducted by the organisation, Golden Jubilee Scholarship awards is the best known. Each year, this award is given to the meritorious students in standard XII of school education or equivalent, who wish to continue their studies and have a parental income less than INR100,000 (US$1,600).
Holdings
LIC holds shares worth about Rs 2.33 lakh crore in all the Nifty companies put together, but it lowered its holding in a total of 27 Nifty companies during the quarter.
The cumulative value of LIC holding in these 27 companies fell by little over Rs 8,000 crore during the quarter shows the analysis of changes in their shareholding patterns.
Individually, LIC is estimated to have sold shares worth Rs 500-1,000 crore in each of Mahindra & Mahindra, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Tata Motors, L&T, HDFC, Wipro, SBI, Maruti Suzuki, Dr Reddys and Bajaj Auto.
The insurance behemoth also trimmed holdings in Ambuja Cements, Cipla, TCS, Lupin and Asian Paints. A marginal decline was also witnessed in its stakes in companies such as IDFC, Hindustan Unilever, Grasim, ACC, BPCL, Bank of Baroda, Punjab National Bank, Sun Pharma and Tata Power.
On the other hand, LIC further ramped up its stake in a total of 14 Nifty constituents with purchase of shares worth an estimated Rs 4,000 crore.
The major companies where LIC has raised its stake include Infosys, RIL, Coal India Ltd and Cairn India. Other such companies are ITC, Power Grid Corp, NTPC, Siemens, Bharti Airtel and Hero MotoCorp.
The state-run insurer also marginally hiked its exposure in Ultratech, Gail India, Ranbaxy, Kotak Mahindra Bank and HCL Technologies, while its shareholding remained almost unchanged in companies like ONGC, Tata Steel, BHEL and Reliance Infra.
Among the Nifty companies, LIC's holding in terms of value in 2012 were estimated to be the highest in ITC (Rs 27,326 crore), followed by RIL (Rs 21,659 crore), ONGC (Rs 17,764 crore), SBI (Rs 17,058 crore), L&T (Rs 16,800 crore), and ICICI Bank (Rs 10,006 crore). its
The share price drop in ITC on July 18 2017 had caused LIC a major loss of around 7000 Crores.
See also
- Insurance in India
- Insurance
- LIC Housing Finance
References
External links
- Life Insurance Corporation of India - Official LIC Website
- LIC Housing Finance Limited
Source of article : Wikipedia
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