Mumbai: Severe competition among non-life insurance companies in motor and crop insurance business have resulted in lower growth of 12.84 per cent to Rs 1.50 lakh crore in terms of gross direct premium in 2018-19. The non-life insurers had grown by 17 per cent to Rs 1.33 lakh crore in 2017-18 and had posted a growth rate of 32 per cent in 2016-17.
Shreeraj Deshpande, Principal Officer and Chief Executive Officer (officiating), Future Generali India Insurance said, “Motor insurance business constitutes 50 per cent of the total insurance business where strong competition kept pricing low. So while the premium growth in motor was low, in terms of the number of motor policies issued the growth has been higher. Secondly, crop insurance is tender driven business and competition kept the premium low here too.”
“However I expect FY20 to be a little better as property insurance rates for corporates have increased after GIC re-raised its raised. So we expect good growth from property insurance business this year. Also on the group health insurance, the rates have gone up,” added Deshpande.
Among the 25 general insurers, private insurers posted faster growth than the public sector general insurance companies. State owned New India Assurance clocked a growth of 5 per cent with a gross direct premium of Rs 23,911 crore in FY19. New India is the market leader with a market share of 14 per cent in the industry. State owned Oriental Insurance grew by 16 per cent to Rs 13,246 crore. However both National Insurance and United India Insurance continued to disappoint with negative growth rates. Kolkata headquartered National Insurance saw its business fall by 6 per cent to Rs 15,178 crore while United India too saw its business drop by 6 per cent to Rs 16,385 crore.
Private insurer ICICI Lombard grew by 17 per cent to Rs 14,488 crore. Bajaj Allianz General, HDFC Ergo General Insurance too reported double digit growth.
On the other hand, seven pure health insurance companies registered 37 per cent growth to Rs 11,368.82 crore for 2018-19.
