“A study on recent trends of life insurance industry after liberalization“

Insurance plays an important role in the growth of an economy. The life insurance service providers offer a variety of products to businesses and individuals in order to provide protection from risk and to ensure financial security. Insurance Industry in India is booming but not to level comparative with the developed economics such as Japan, Singapore and other developed economies of the world. After liberalization, the industry has gone under a massive change and witnessed several positive developments with significant double digit growth. The present descriptive and evaluative based study is conducted with an objective to study various recent and emerging trends of life insurance in post liberalization period. The period of study confined to ten years from 2001–02 to 2009–10 and purely based on the secondary data obtained through IRDA website, Company's websites, annual reports, various insurance publications, insurance journals, internet etc. The data has been presented and analysis in the form of tables and graphs. Entry of foreign firms, increased market competition, rising market share of private insurers, repositioning of life insurance products and services, customer relationship management, multiple distribution channels are some of the recent trends of life insurance which have been discussed at length in the paper. There has been witnessed remarkable growth in life insurance premium income, new business policies and large contribution of Unit linked policies in life insurance business, the market share of LIC has been declined after privatization but the overall growth of the industry has been improved over the last few years of liberalization are the major findings of the study. The paper concludes that there is a phenomenal opportunity of market expansion for life insurers in India and the changing trends of Indian insurance industry is the only best way to deal with the challenges and survive in turbulence global competitive business environment.