The business premium of the non-life insurers grew 23 percent with total premium collection at Rs. 3,692 cror
Mumbai: In January 2011, the general insurance grew 23 per cent. The gross premium of the industry increased to Rs. 3,692 crore in January 2011 as against Rs. 2,996 crore for the corresponding period of previous year. Private sector players grew 26 per cent collecting Rs. 1,672 crore whereas public sector advancing 20 per cent.
Even though the industry’s YTD growth rate stood at 22 per cent, sequentially the numbers grew by only 4 per cent.
Private insurers managed to increase their market share by 100 basis point in January 2011 in the non-life business.
Among private insurers ICICI Lombard collected the highest premium of Rs. 387 crore, strongly up by 17 per cent. Bajaj Allianz and Iffco-Tokio second and third largest non-life insurers witnessed their business growing 20 and 27 per cent respectively.
Reliance was the only insurers to report negative growth rate of 19 per cent during first 10 months of the current fiscal. The insurer’s gross premium collection slowed down to Rs. 1373 crore in April-Jan 2011 period as compared to Rs. 1,709 crore for the same period a year ago.
Among public sector non-life business is evenly distributed compared to private players with each sharing 23 to 25 per cent premium collection. New India Insurance business premium grew 18 per cent to Rs. 540 crore, followed by National insurance and United India underwriting premiums of Rs. 525 crore and Rs. 488 crore respectively.
Special Institutions
Among the five specialized institutions, health insurers such as Star Health & Allied Insurance, Apollo Munich and Max Bupa witnessed their business premium growing 307 per cent to Rs. 284 crore in January 2010, as against Rs. 70 crore for the same month in previous year.