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C.R. Sukumar

HYDERABAD, March 8

IT looks like a classic case of competition giving the public sector monopoly a run for its money and in the bargain, resulting in benefits to a large number of consumers by way of improved services for the same old money.

Thanks to the opening up of the insurance sector to private players, Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), the public sector life insurance giant, is apparently now engaged in retaining its market leadership position and making all-out attempts to further consolidate, especially after finding the private sector players already grabbing a market share of around nine per cent as at the end of January, 2003.

For the first time, the corporation has even fixed targets such as attaining zero outstanding maturity claims, going in for special campaigns for the revival of lapsed policies, significantly increasing its agents force and e-initiatives aimed at instantaneous processing of proposals.

According to the senior officials of LIC - South Central Zone, the objective of the zone is to attain the position of zero outstanding maturity claims before the current fiscal-end. Already, 52 out of 314 branches in the zone have achieved this feat.

In fact, some of the divisions have gone ahead in occupying top ranks on the all-India level in maturity claims speed ratio and lowest outstanding claims. As a result, the zone has occupied the second position in the country in speed ratio and least outstanding maturity claims.

In the case of death claims, the objective is to increase the speed ratio of settlement of non-early death claims and reduce the outstanding ratio. The zone has improved the speed ratio to 91 per cent from the last year's position of 89 per cent. The outstanding ratio has been reduced to 12.33 from 15 of the previous year. This is being claimed as the best performance achieved among the zones of similar size.

Interestingly, recruitment of agents is now being considered as a key indicator for the performance. The zone has added as many as 33,488 agents during the current fiscal year when compared to only 14,618 agents recruited in the corresponding period of previous fiscal, indicating a growth of 129 per cent. In fact, the qualification levels of agents have showed a phenomenal growth of 90 per cent.

The corporation has also gone in for achieving performance in terms of special campaign for the revival of lapsed policies.

During a 45-day programme taken up recently, the SC Zone alone has revived as many as 3,56,595 policies for a sum assured of Rs 1,173.19 crore and a premium income of Rs 126 crore.

Of the 314 branches in the zone, 254 branches have been already connected through wide area network for payment of premium.

The corporation has also enabled its customers to pay the premium through Internet.

Aimed at popularising the rural insurance, LIC had designed the Bima Gram concept.

The SC Zone had already declared 55 Bima Grams and it expected another 300 to get qualified to receive the incentives under the campaign before the fiscal-end, the officials said.

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