LIC IPO plan: Chairman tells when India’s largest insurer will be listed

Putting an end to the speculations over its listing, Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) Chairman MR Kumar on Wednesday said that it’s too early for the country’s largest insurance firm to go public. LIC manages assets in excess of Rs 31 lakh crore as of July end this year. Adding, he said that the insurer sees plenty of high growth from here despite the ongoing slowdown in the economy, ET Now reported. LIC has seen slowdown cycles before as well and it will ride over it too, LIC Chairman added. Even as the slowdown has hit the insurance sector, LIC has done well as against the private sector peers and also managed to get some of the lost market share in the smaller cities, MK Kumar noted.

Speaking further about the company, he said, “The insurer has made Rs 13,000 crore profit on this,” he said. Last year, it made Rs 23,000 crore profit from equity.” The company is now focussing on selling ULIP products along with a part of the overall mix, he added. The insurer is also focussing on growth and the plan is to get back to Rs 4-5 crore policy growth from here on, ML Kumar said.

LIC Chairman also said the insurance firm also plans to add 16,000 officers but does not have plans to add branches. He said LIC is integrating smaller branches with IDBI Bank branches and is going digital fast to seek technology-led business growth via new products.

Meanwhile, a rise of 35 per cent at Rs 125,758 crore was recorded in the life insurance premium of all 24 players in the April-September quarter of the FY20, according to the Life Insurance Council. In the first six months of the ongoing fiscal, the new premium collected by LIC zoomed 42 per cent to Rs 89,980 crore. For the rest of the private sector players, the cumulative premium till September 2019 rose 21 per cent to Rs 35,778 crore, the data showed.

Source: Financial Express