Life Insurance Council launches an equivalent of 'Mutual Funds Sahi Hai'

In March 2017, the Association of Mutual Funds of India (Amfi) launched a campaign with the tagline 'Mutual Funds Sahii Hai'. Ever since, the awareness and acceptance of the investment product has only increased with more and more people on boarding various mutual funds investment platforms. With a similar strategy, the Life Insurance Council launches an equivalent of 'Mutual Funds Sahi Hai' today announced a mass media campaign with the slogan 'Sabse Pehle Life Insurance' with an aim to increase life insurance awareness and helping the masses understand the product's true purpose.

Insurance penetration in India in continues to be at 3.69%, one of the lowest across the world, according to the annual report by Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai). Between FY 2014-15 to 2016-17, life insurance penetration in the country was at a flat 2.7%. The complex nature of the product with a host of terms and conditions is one of the biggest reasons why the product is not bought in huge numbers. However, this campaign is a significant step towards increasing life insurance awareness. "As part of Indian culture, our elders have always stressed on doing the most essential things first and then opt to carry on with other things. This is an integral part of day to day conversations. 'Sabse Pehle Life Insurance' comes from this very cultural nuance and will help establish an understanding of the essentiality of life insurance in our lives and the need to treat it as top most priority while planning for life," said V Manickam, secretary, life insurance council. Note that Life Insurance Council is the face of the life insurance industry that connects the various stakeholders of the industry. It functions jointly with all the life insurers through several sub-committees.

Amol Joshi, founder, PlanRupee Investment Services said the Amfi campaign over the last couple of years has greatly helped in deepening the acceptance of mutual funds as an investment product so a similar campaign for life insurance could help. "Mutual funds have now become synonymous to SIP. I've heard people say they don't want to invest in mutual funds but want to invest in SIPs without realizing that SIPs is just a way of investing in mutual funds. But still, it's pushing people to invest. Insurance industry too needs a similar template and they can achieve this by starting with pushing term plans," said Joshi. A term plan is a pure life cover which provides coverage for a defined period of time. In case the policyholder is deceased before the plan expires, the nominee is given the death benefit.

Source: Live Mint