LIC to celebrate 66th anniversary today

Hyderabad: Life Insurance Corporation of India, a premier financial conglomerate with footprints in 14 countries, enters into 66th year of its existence on Wednesday. "True to the objective of nationalisation, LIC is committed to propagate the message of life insurance to reach all insurable people at a reasonable cost," the company said in a statement thanking its policyholders and stakeholders.

Starting with an initial capital of Rs 5 crore in 1956, LIC has now an asset base of Rs 38.04 lakh crore, with life fund to the tune of Rs 34.37 lakh crore. As per a survey report released by Brand Finance Insurance 100, the corporation is the third strongest and tenth most valuable brand in the world. In 2020-21, it has settled 229.15 lakh claims amounting to Rs 1.48 crore.

Despite two decades of opening up of insurance sector, LIC continues to be a market leader by holding majority of market share - 66.18 per cent in first year premium income and 74.58 per cent in number of policies. During 2020-21, it has sold 2.10 crore new policies and registered a growth of 3.48 per cent in the new business in terms of the first year premium by collecting an amount of Rs 1.84 lakh crore.

Its pension and group superannuation business vertical crossed one-trillion mark successively for two years in a row by collecting Rs 1.28 lakh crore as new business premium income. It has eight zonal offices, 113 divisional offices, 74 customer zones, 2,048 branch offices, 1,546 satellite offices, more than 42,000 premium points and life plus offices, over one lakh employees and 13.53 lakh agents. Besides this, LIC has tied up with eight public-sector banks, six private banks, 13 regional rural banks, 41 cooperative banks and one foreign bank to enhance productivity. It has formidable distribution channel to bring about qualitative and quantitative improvement in business. LIC has won 19 awards in insurance category during 2020-21.