LIC drive to for Growth push and recast policies

The LIC is planning to redesign 12 policies by the end of this year to comply with the revised life insurance guidelines laid down by the IRDA in February.

The country’s largest life insurer is facing the dual challenge of having an adequate number of policies that adhere to the revised guidelines and sufficient trained agents to sell them.

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) had initially set a deadline of September 30 to life insurers to come up with policies conforming to the new guidelines. The deadline was later extended to December 31.

The LIC had 50 saleable policies at the beginning of the year. Almost all of them need to be revised following the IRDA directive.

At present, the LIC’s Jeevan Arogya and Jeevan Akshay meet the new guidelines. The challenge that lies before the LIC is to retain the agents on the policy changes within a short time….. with new plans, new conditions… for all those things they have to spend a lot of time and money. The LIC has more than 1.4 lakh agents in the eastern zone, which serves 3.36 crore policyholders through various branches and satellite offices.

The LIC is also looking to strengthen alternative channels such as bancassurance, which involves the sale of policies through banks. Bhargava said the insurer had tied up with 19 banks, of which nine are PSU lenders and the rest gramin and state co-operative