In a bid to arrest the high attrition levels and encourage them to do more business, the national insurer Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) has hiked gratuity for its over a million agents to Rs3 lakh. The Corporation makes as much as 94% of its premium income through its over 1.1 million agents, while the private sector rivals net around half their business through the agency route. During the past financial year, the Corporation recruited 245,000 agents but as many as 340,000 agents got terminated or voluntarily left during the year. As of March 2016, LIC had 1.06 million agents, while this rose to 1.10 million as of end-January. But this year so far, LIC has added 45,000 agents on net basis. “So far this financial year, we recruited 270,000 agents while 225,000 were terminated/voluntarily left the Corporation, which is a net addition of 45,000. This takes our total agency strength to 1.105 million as of end-January,” an LIC official told PTI. “Gratuity payable to an agent shall be at the eligible rate for each qualifying year for the first 15 qualifying years and at half the eligible rate for the subsequent 10 qualifying years, provided the maximum amount of gratuity payable shall not exceed Rs3 lakh,” stated a Gazette of India notification.
