Of the total 21.95 lakh agents in the life insurance industry as on March 2019, over 27.5% or 6.03 lakh were women, shows the latest report released by IRDAI.
The Rs.35 lakh crore life insurance industry has witnessed a growth of 4% i.e. from 5.79 lakh women agents in March 2018.
State owned LIC India account for 48% of the total women agents. The insurer had 2.89 lakh women agents as on March 2019. The proportion of male-female ratio in LIC was 76:24.
Such a proportion is higher among private insurers. Max Life Insurance had the highest percentage of women agents at 45% followed by IDBI Federal Life Insurance at 41.2% and Star Union Daichi Life Insurance at 35.9%.
Vignesh Shahane, CEO, IDBI Federal Life Insurance believes that this is due to growing number of women investors. He said, “The number of women buying insurance is also rising, hence, the market demands more female sellers. I believe that women are better at marketing insurance than men and hence most insurance companies have more women among their top ten agents than men.”
Mayank Bathwal, CEO, Aditya Birla Health Insurance attributes this to flexible working hours. He said that most women have personal commitments and deploying most of their time to a full time job is not possible.
Industry experts points out that in many cases, men are the actual agents and women are titular or acting agents; most likely for tax benefits or due to terms and conditions of the men’s existing jobs. Therefore, on record the number of women insurance agents has witnessed growth.