No. of women buying life cover dips: IRDAI

Hyderabad: The number of women putting a premium on their lives has declined in 2019-20. As per IRDAI’s latest annual report, in 2019-20, women accounted for only 32% of the new life insurance policies sold as compared to 36% in 2018-19.

When it comes to the first-year premium too, women’s contribution declined to 34% in 2019-20 as compared to 37% in the year-ago period.

Total number of life insurance policies sold in 2019-20 stood at 2.88 crore, with a first-year premium of Rs 1.02 lakh crore. Of these, women accounted for 93 lakh policies sold with a first-year premium of nearly Rs 34,737 crore. While most life insurers said they could not ascertain factors behind this drop, an industry expert said more number of working women are going beyond life insurance and looking at other products, mainly health insurance, as well as other investment tools such as mutual funds, as a result of which there could have been a slight dip in the numbers. However, it is important to note that India’s female labour force participation rate has been declining and stood at over 20% in 2019 as compared to over 30% in 2005.

Out of the 93 lakh policies bought by women in 2019-20, nearly one-third were in three states — Maharashtra (11.98%), West Bengal (10.60%) and UP (9.87%). Similarly, out of Rs 34,737 crore first-year premium contributed by women, slightly more than one-third was from Maharashtra (17.05%), West Bengal (9.66%) and UP (8.66%). Interestingly, women accounted for 27% of all life policies sold by private insurers, whereas in the case of LIC, this number was 34%.

With this decline in the number of life insurance policies bought by women, who constitute 49% of the total population of the country, their share in this segment has dropped to 2017-18 levels. In 2017-18 too, women accounted for 32% of the total life insurance policies sold. Besides, when it comes to the insurance sector, annual report stated that 6.15 lakh women are working as agents in life insurance industry, making it 27% of total individual agency force as on March 31, 2020. Of these, share of private life insurers was 55%, whereas share of LIC was 45%.

Source: The Times of India