Technical Efficiency of Indian Life Insurance Companies-A Mathematical Programming Approach

In view of the liberalisation of the Indian life insurance sector, the relative performance of the life insurance companies is of interest for both academician-researchers and policy makers. The present paper compares the technical efficiency (TE) of the major life insurance companies operating in India for the period 2005–06 to 2008–09 using the Charnes Cooper Rhodes (CCR) and Banker Charnes Cooper (BCC) envelopment model and the slacks-based measure model developed by Tone (2001). The results suggest that there still exist a significant gap between the Life Insurance Corporation of India and other life insurance companies in terms of TE.