Indian Life Insurance Market and Corporate Performances: A Study of Selected Firms

In the pre-reform era, Life Insurance Corporation of India (LICI) dominated the Indian life insurance market with a market share close to 100 percent. But the situation drastically changed since the enactment of the IRDA Act in 1999. At the end of the FY 2012-13, the market share of LICI stood at around 73 percent with the number of players having risen to 24 in the country's life insurance sector. One of the reasons for such a decline in the market share of LICI during the post-reform period could be attributed to the increasing competition prevailing in the country's life insurance sector. At the same time, the liberalisation of the life insurance sector for private participation has eventually raised issues about ensuring sound financial performance and solvency of the life insurance companies besides protection of the interest of policyholders.

The present study is an attempt to evaluate and compare the financial performances, solvency, and the market concentration of the four leading life insurers in India namely the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LICI), ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Limited (ICICI PruLife), HDFC Standard Life Insurance Company Limited (HDFC Standard), and SBI Life Insurance Company Limited (SBI Life), over a span of five successive FYs 2008-09 to 2012-13. In this regard, the CARAMELS model has been used to evaluate the performances of the selected life insurers, based on the Financial Soundness Indicators (FSIs) as published by IMF. In addition to this, the Solvency and the Market Concentration Analyses were also presented for the selected life insurers for the given period. The present study revealed the preexisting dominance of LICI even after 15 years since the privatisation of the country's life insurance sector.