• Investment World
• eWorld
• Catalyst
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest

Our Bureau

CHENNAI, March 26

THE Chairman of LIC, Mr S.B. Mathur, has said that he expects to make good use of the last week of this fiscal to push insurance policy sales.

Mr Mathur was in Chennai in connection with the inauguration of a new branch of Corporation Bank in its premises.

Traditionally, LIC sold about 35 per cent of its policies in March. In the previous year, the figure was around 22 per cent. In some regions, such as the west zone, the company sold 40 per cent of its policies in March, he said.

Mr Mathur declined to reveal the number of policies sold by the company so far in the current fiscal. The company had sold around 2.32 crore policies in the previous fiscal.

Asked about controlling expense ratios, Mr Mathur said that the company was within the prescribed limit. He said that salary expenses were at 8 per cent of costs and the goal was to bring them to around 5 per cent in line with international levels.

Asked to comment on advertisement budget, Mr Mathur said that this would be decided on the basis of fresh premium accruals. He drew attention to the last year's advertisement budget of Rs 110 crore and compared it to fresh premium inflow of around Rs 15,000 crore in that year.

When asked about the relatively better performance of private players in the pensions business, Mr Mathur said that the market was a small one still. He drew comfort from the fact that LIC still had a 70 per cent market share in this business.

He said that LIC was in talks with a couple of banks with regard to swapping its short-term government securities for the long-term securities held by the banks at market prices.

Some of the banks had responded positively and some others had said that they would proceed on this issue after the close of the fiscal, he said.

He also said that the company's operations in Sri Lanka had got off to a start since March.

The company had also completed its public issue in its Nepal operations (oversubscribed by 16 times).

Mr Mathur conceded that international business still constituted a very small portion of total business and expected it to touch 5 per cent in the next four to five years.

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication

Stories in this Section
IRDA may get annuity pie of pensions markets

Copyright © 2003, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line