LIFE INSURANCE CORPORATION OF INDIA

The Parliament of India enacted the Life

Insurance Corporation Act on the 19th of June
1956, and the Life Insurance Corporation of
Indian was established on 1st September,
1956, with the objective of spreading life
insurance much more widely and in particular
to the rural areas with a view to reach all
insurable persons in the country, providing
them adequate financial cover at a reasonable
cost. The main objective of the organization of
the life insurance business was to spread the
message of life insurance in the country and
mobilize peoples savings for nation building
activities.
The Life Insurance Corporation with its
Central Office in Mumbai and eight Zonal
Offices at Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai,
Hyderabad, Kanpur, Bhopal and Patna
operates through 109 Divisional Offices
including one Salary Savings Scheme (SSS)
Division at Mumbai, 2048 Branch Offices
and 1004 Satellite Offices as at 31.3.2010.
The Corporation also transacts business
abroad and has branch offices in Fiji,
Mauritius and United Kingdom. LIC also
operates in overseas Insurance Market
through Joint Venture Companies namely
Life Insurance Corporation (International) B
S C (C), registered in Manama (Bahrain),
Kenindia Assurance Company Ltd.,
registered in Nairobi, Life Insurance
Corporation (Nepal) Ltd. registered in
Kathmandu, Life Insurance Corporation
(Lanka) Ltd. registered in Colombo and
Saudi Indian Company for Co-operative
Insurance registered in Riyadh. An offshore
company, Life Insurance Corporation
(Mauritius) Offshore Ltd. registered in Port
Louis, Mauritius is a Joint Venture Company
between LIC of India and GIC of India. It
has been decided that this company defers
its life business activities and contemplates
to pursue non-life reinsurance business
with active participation of GIC.
A Representative Office has been
established recently in Singapore to study
the Regulatory Issues and to assess the
market potential in order to find an
appropriate mode of entry into Singapore
insurance market.
Among the above, Kenindia Assurance Co.
Ltd., Nairobi, Kenya & Saudi Insurance
Company for Co-operative Insurance, Riyadh,
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are composite
companies transacting life and non-life
business.
Life Insurance Corporation of India
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Life Insurance Corporation of India

Type
Government-owned
corporation
Industry Insurance
Founded 1 September 1956
Headquarters Mumbai, India
Key people
T. S. Vijayan (Chairman)
D. K. Mehrotra, Thomas
Mathew and A. Dasgupta
(MD)
Products
Life insurance
Pensions
Mutual funds
Total assets
9.31 trillion (US$206.68
billion)
Owner(s) Government of India
Employees 115,966 (2010)
Subsidiaries
LIC Housing Finance
Limited
LIC(Nepal)Ltd
LIC(Lanka)Ltd
LIC(International)BSC(C)
Website www.licindia.in
The Life Insurance Corporation of India
(LIC) (Hindi: ) is
the largest state-owned life insurance
company in India, and also the country's
largest investor. It is fully owned by the
Government of India. It also funds close to
24.6% of the Indian Government's expenses.
It has assets estimated of 9.31 trillion
(US$206.68 billion).
[1]
It was founded in
1956 with the merger of more than 200
insurance companies and provident
societies.
[2]

Headquartered in Mumbai, financial and
commercial capital of India,
[3]
the Life
Insurance Corporation of India currently has
8 zonal Offices and 101 divisional offices
located in different parts of India, at least
2048 branches located in different cities and
towns of India along with satellite Offices
attached to about some 50 Branches, and has
a network of around 1.2 million agents for
soliciting life insurance business from the
public.
Contents
[hide]
1 History
2 Nationalization
3 Current status
4 References
5 External links
[edit] History
The Oriental Life Insurance Company, the
first corporate entity in India offering life
insurance coverage, was established in
Calcutta in 1818 by Bipin Bernard Dasgupta
and others. Europeans in India were its
primary target market, and it charged
Indians heftier premiums. The Bombay
Mutual Life Assurance Society, formed in
1870, was the first native insurance
provider. Other insurance companies
established in the pre-independence era
included
Bharat Insurance Company (1896)
United India (1906)
National Indian (1906)
National Insurance (1906)
Co-operative Assurance (1906)
Hindustan Co-operatives (1907)
Indian Mercantile
General Assurance
Swadeshi Life (later Bombay Life)
The first 150 years were marked mostly by
turbulent economic conditions. It witnessed,
India's First War of Independence, adverse
effects of the World War I and World War II
on the economy of India, and in between
them the period of world wide economic
crises triggered by the Great depression. The
first half of the 20th century also saw a
heightened struggle for India's
independence. The aggregate effect of these
events led to a high rate of bankruptcies and
liquidation of life insurance companies in
India. This had adversely affected the faith
of the general public in the utility of
obtaining life cover.
The Life Insurance Act and the Provident
Fund Act were passed in 1912, providing the
first regulatory mechanisms in the Life
Insurance industry. The Indian Insurance
Companies Act of 1928 authorized the
government to obtain statistical information
from companies operating in both life and
non-life insurance areas. The subsequent
Insurance Act of 1938 brought stricter state
control over an industry that had seen
several financially unsound ventures fail. A
bill was also introduced in the Legislative
Assembly in 1944 to nationalize the
insurance industry.
[edit] Nationalization
In 1955, parliamentarian Amol Barate raised
the matter of insurance fraud by owners of
private insurance companies. In the ensuing
investigations, one of India's wealthiest
businessmen, Ram Kishan Dalmia, owner of
the Times of India newspaper, was sent to
prison for two years. Eventually, the
Parliament of India passed the Life
Insurance of India Act on 1956-06-19, and
the Life Insurance Corporation of India was
created on 1956-09-01, by consolidating the
life insurance business of 245 private life
insurers and other entities offering life
insurance services. Nationalization of the
life insurance business in India was a result
of the Industrial Policy Resolution of 1956,
which had created a policy framework for
extending state control over at least
seventeen sectors of the economy, including
the life insurance.
[edit] Current status


LIC building, at Connaught Place, New
Delhi, designed by Charles Correa, 1986.
Over its existence of around 50 years, Life
Insurance Corporation of India, which
commanded a monopoly of soliciting and
selling life insurance in India, created huge
surpluses, and contributed around 7 % of
India's GDP in 2006.
The Corporation, which started its business
with around 300 offices, 5.6 million policies
and a corpus of INR 459 million (US$ 92
million as per the 1959 exchange rate of
roughly Rs. 5 for a US $
[4]
, has grown to
25000 servicing around 180 million policies
and a corpus of over 8 trillion (US$177.6
billion).
The recent
[when?]
Economic Times Brand
Equity Survey rated LIC as the No. 1
Service Brand of the Country. The slogan of
LIC is "Zindagi ke saath bhi,Zindagi ke
baad bhi"in hindi. In english it means "with
life also,after life also.
According to The Brand Trust Report
[5]

2011, LIC is the 8th most trusted brand of
India.