The life insurance industry has close to 22 lakh agents as on March 2019, shows the latest life insurance council (LIC) data. Over 1.12 lakh agents joined life insurance distribution business last fiscal.
A further analysis of the data shows that this is the fourth straight month when industry saw addition in the number of agents, a positive sign for the industry.
While LIC alone added 30,500 agents last fiscal, their private counterparts saw addition of 86,700 new distributors.
Among the private players, Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance clocked the highest net increase in its agents. It hired 58,851 new agents, while 29,039 agents left the insurer, taking net addition in agent count to 29,812. ICICI Prudential Life Insurance and SBI Life Insurance added the highest number of agents after Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance last fiscal.
Meanwhile, Aditya Birla Sun Life insurance lost 10,192 agents, the highest among all life insurers. Reliance Nippon Life Insurance and Max Life Insurance followed the list of highest attrition, respectively.
Kapil Mehta, co-founder and CEO of insurance broking firm Secure Now said that if an insurer is adding new agents even when the attrition rate is not high, it means it is looking to expand its business. Meanwhile, if an insurer’s attrition is higher than its addition of new agents, they are eyeing for profitability by removing non-performing agents.
Agents dominate life insurance sales for individual investors. Usually, they channelize a lion’s share of the industry’s new business premium.
|
Insurer |
No. of agents as on 1 Apr, 2018 |
No. of agents as on 31 Mar,2019 |
|
Private |
9,33,857 |
10,15,518 |
|
LIC India |
11,48,811 |
11,79,229 |
|
Total |
20,82,668 |
21,94,747 |
