India: Women account for a third of all new individual life insurance policies
Source: Asia Insurance Review | Feb 2022
The number of individual life insurance policies issued to women in the financial year ended 31 March 2021 (FY2021) was around 9.3m which was 33.00% of the total number of 28.1m new policies sold to both men and women in the fiscal year, according to the 2020-2021 annual report of the IRDAI.
The 33% proportion was an improvement on the 32.23% recorded for FY2020. In comparison, women comprise roughly 49% of the total population in India.
The findings were the result of a brief study on the participation of women in life insurance. Only individual new business data - number of policies and first-year premiums - for FY2021 were considered for the purpose.
The report also showed that the proportion of life insurance policies for women was 27% for privately-held life insurers and 35% for the country’s biggest life insurer LIC.
The report also found that life insurance was available to women on the same terms as men, subject to their income-earning capacity. In fact, there is a positive practice of according preferential treatment to the female lives by most of the life insurers while charging the premium as their life expectancy is higher. A