LIC gearing up, sets up WAN

By March 2001, LIC plans to extend WAN to 33 other centres covering 293 branches thus taking the total number of branches connected to over 600, he added. However, policyholders feel the LIC should have automated its operations much earlier. “LIC has woken up when private players started entering the sector,” said a policyholder.

Patil called on the LIC to tap the potential for insurance in the agriculture sector, marking use of increased connectivity through the internet. The benefits of liberalisation should reach the majority and not be confined to select a few, said the minister. He noted with satisfaction that 54.7 per cent of LIC’s new policies had been sold in rural areas through its vast agency network and 2,048 branches, Patil added.

Patil further stated that over 49.35 lakh people belonging to 24 different occupations among the weaker sections of society, over one crore landless agricultural labourers and 1.28 crore IRDP beneficiaries have been covered by the social security group insurance of the LIC, the Minister said.

Patil also reminded the gathering that the human face of work culture in insurance should not be lost. With the opening of the insurance sector, he said LIC would be required to face competition and urged the company to retain its role as market leader by further improving service to customers and diversifying its products through use of IT and connectivity.

“Statistics revealed that LIC had been settling claims quicker over the year,” said the Minister. During 1999-2000, LIC settled 66.42 lakh claims for Rs 9211.30 crore, while the ratio of outstanding claims was only 4.19 per cent in terms of amount and 2.36 per cent in terms of number of claims by March 2000.

Meanwhile, LIC is also exploring all existing payment gateways so as to enable its policy holders to pay insurance premiums and view status of their policy via the internet. “We are waiting for the existing payment gateways to rope in large public sector banks so as to benefit a maximum number of our policy holders,” LIC executive director A Ramamurthy said.

Discussions were on with ICICI, which already has a payment gateway in place, he said, adding, LIC was also looking at other players like Global Telesystems. Policyholders could instruct their bank, which is part of the gateway, to pay the policy premium to LIC via this medium, Ramamurthy said.

YP Gupta, current-in-charge and managing director of LIC, said in the current fiscal upto August 15, 2000, the growth rate of individual insurance policies, sum assured and first premium income was 31.6 per cent, 38.2 per cent and 42.2 per cent respectively as compared to same period of the previous year. LIC’s contribution to the ninth year plan in first three years upto 1999-2000, was Rs 79,666 crore, he said, adding, in the next two years, a total sum of Rs 1,30,000 crore could be achieved.