LIC to invest Rs 8,000 cr in markets

NEW DELHI, MARCH 24: Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) has targeted an investment of Rs 8,000 crore in stock markets across the c...

NEW DELHI, MARCH 24: Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) has targeted an investment of Rs 8,000 crore in stock markets across the country during the current fiscal, LIC chairman G Krishnamurthy today said.

This would be Rs 2,000 crore more than the previous year’s Rs 6,000 crore, Krishnamurthy told newspersons here. “We are long-term investors and we invest to take advantage later during the boom period.”

The corporation’s total investments is poised to cross Rs 122,000 crore by March 31, 1999 and total income would be over Rs 30,000 crore. On the impending competition from private operators following passage of the Insurance Regulatory Authority Bill, Krishnamurthy said the corporation was restructuring its operations for the purpose. “To start with, we are trying to improve our product line up and introduce better and more attractive insurance products for our customers.” However, he refused to give details on the same.

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Besides, substantial investments are being made for upgrading technologyand privatisation exercise is being undertaken within the corporation to make the workforce more professional.

LIC, he said, has computerised all policies and are now moving towards on-line services and computerising all front-end operations. Towards this end, LIC today set into motion a metro area network (MAN) and interactive voice response system (IVRS) for Delhi. A similar system is already operational in Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore and four more cities — Calcutta, Ahmedabad, Pune and Hyderabad — would be covered during the fiscal 1999-2000.

MAN in Delhi, he said, will use leased lines from MTNL and network 62 branches in the city enabling access to 35 lakh policies. The corporation has paid MTNL Rs 90 lakh for its services. The network will enable a policyholder in Delhi to render premium payments for the policy at any of the 62 branches. Besides the networking, the IVRS will enable a policyholder in the capital to know his policy details such as premium position and status of policy overtelephone.

As a next step, LIC would be linking all the centres, starting with the metros.