Flipkart partners with Aegon to sell quick-access life insurance policies

E-commerce marketplace Flipkart and Aegon Life Insurance on Monday joined hands to sell comprehensive insurance solutions for customers looking for instant digital policies with a sum assured of up to Rs 10 lakh.

With instant life insurance cover through a digital policy as its core value proposition, such policies do not require medical tests or paperwork.

Life insurance has the second highest penetration among all types of insurance available in the country. One of the major problems that the insurance industry faces today is the notion that it is expensive and cumbersome to buy, followed by issues around long and rigid tenures and mis-selling.

"With this product, Flipkart and Aegon Life aim to solve for these issues and make life insurance available to customers at the click of a button in a convenient and transparent manner," Flipkart said in a statement.

The life insurance policies have varied offerings with sums assured ranging from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 10 lakh and premiums starting from Rs 129 for Rs 1 lakh sum insured. The policies will be available to the existing customers of Flipkart between the ages of 18 and 65 years.

Women's share in life insurance policies is 36% in FY19: Irdai report

Women comprise 48 per cent of India’s population but their participation in life insurance is lower than that of men. In 2018-19 (FY19), of 28.6 million policies sold by the life insurers, women have subscribed to 10.3 million, Irdai’s annual report for FY19 revealed.

The share of women in terms of number of policies is 36 per cent, higher than what it was in FY18 at 32 per cent. Similarly, share of women in the first-year premiums was 37 per cent in FY19, as against 32 per cent in FY18.

In first half of FY20, life insurers clock 35% growth in new premium

In the first half of the financial year 2019-20 (April-September 2019, or H1FY20), life insurance companies saw a growth of 35 per cent in new business premium collections. While the collections grew 41 per cent for state-owned insurance behemoth Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), private insurers clocked a 20.88 per cent growth.

In absolute terms, the life insurance industry earned new business premiums to the tune of Rs 1.25 trillion in H1FY20, compared to Rs 93,078 crore in the same period a year ago. Of this, LIC alone amassed Rs 89,980 crore while private insurers accumulated new business premiums of Rs 35,777 crore.

New business premium is the premium acquired from new policies in a particular time period. However, the growth for September was not as impressive as it is for the combined numbers of the first two quarters.

In September, the segment saw a 14 per cent growth with LIC premiums growing at 18 per cent and private insurers premiums growing at 8 per cent.

ChartIn Annualised Premium Equivalent (APE) terms, which is estimated by taking the value of regular premiums and adding 10 per cent of single premiums underwritten during that period, the private players grew 3.8 per cent year-on-year (yoy) in September indicating that the slowdown in the economy might have impacted the performance of private players, said a research report by Emkay Global Financial Services.

“Growth of private players was very tepid in September 2019 due to the impact of the current economic slowdown finally hurting the insurance sector with a lag,” the research report read.

“Retail APE for private players grew 2.5 per cent yoy, while it contracted by 2.8 per cent yoy for the industry as LIC’s retail APE growth contracted by 10.6 per cent yoy,” the report said.