The country’s largest insurance company, Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), had the most productive agency force in FY17 with each agent selling 17.12 new policies during FY17. According to a study on the Life Insurance Industry in India in 2017 by Fintelekt, HDFC Life had the best average for the private sector at 6.52 new policies per agent.
The report said that while the number of exclusive or tied agents engaged by life insurance companies has seen fluctuation over the years, the number of agents in FY17 was lower than that in FY13.
“This has been attributed to the high churn among agents as well as the efforts of life insurance companies in recent years to improve productivity and weed out under-performing agents,” the report said.
Source: Fintelekt
Of the 20,88,519 agents employed in FY17, more than half or 11,31,181 agents, were engaged by LIC. Among private sector companies, Reliance Nippon Life had the highest (1,62,276) agents.
In terms of agent productivity, among private sector companies, apart from HDFC Life, SBI Life was at the second best at 4.67 policies per agent.
However, the report said that despite the reliance on bancassurance as the main distribution channel, bancassurance led companies engaged a sizeable agency force in FY17, (4,88,886) among the 11 bancassurance-led companies (in the previous table), as on March 31, 2017.
Bajaj Allianz Life had the highest average ticket size per agent of Rs 33,008 in FY17, according to Fintelekt. Among the bancassurance-led companies, ICICI Prudential Life had the highest average ticket size Rs 23,359 for retail agents.
As per current insurance regulations on bancassurance, banks are allowed to sell products of multiple insurance companies. Fintelekt research showed that LIC has the maximum number of tie-ups with 60 banks, followed by SBI Life with 30 banks.
The research also said that several of the bancassurance tie-ups are with smaller, regional or co-operative banks that may not necessarily contribute a large proportion to a particular bank’s premium.
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