Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) has increased its share of the first-year premium income in the first nine months of this fiscal. LIC’s share rose to 70.52% from 66.24% recorded in 2018-19.

“During the current fiscal, our market share improved in terms of first-year premium income. We have crossed last year’s collection of ₹1,42,000 crore in total first-year premium, 67 days ahead of the schedule,” Mukesh Kumar Gupta, managing director, LIC, said.

LIC also crossed ₹1 lakh crore in first year premium in the Pension and Group Insurance vertical for the first time. Mr. Gupta added that the insurance major had ₹32 lakh crore in assets and ₹29 lakh crore in investment. Recently, it had paid dividend of ₹2,611 crore to the Centre.

As of December, LIC had posted a growth of 17.81% in number of policies sold and 45.56% in first year premium income.

According to Mr. Gupta, LIC had set itself a target of ₹56,000 crore in individual business premium and ₹1.25 lakh crore for the pension and group insurance scheme for FY20. Together with renewal income of about ₹2 lakh crore, LIC would be gunning for the ₹4 lakh crore-mark this fiscal, he said. For FY21, LIC plans to increase the number of insurance agents from 12 lakh to 15 lakh. In this regard, it had already recruited officers and development officers. About 8,000 assistant officers would be placed soon.

On NPAs, he added that LIC’s net non-performing asset (NPA) ratio stood at 1% for the current fiscal, despite major defaults by some corporate borrowers. “We are doing well on all counts. Most loans are given through consortium and the consortium partners are working on it,” he said. Asked about the recovery mechanism, he said: “Provisions have been fully made and efforts are on to recover bad debts. ”

On banking subsidiary IDBI Bank, he expressed optimism that it would come out of the Prompt Corrective Action framework by March 2020. It had ‘already started showing some green shoots’, he said.