Thursday, October 6, 2011

Purchasing Life Insurance Online


No pesky calls, no badgering agents, not even a mail from the friendly wealth manager at the bank. Yet, Net-savvy Indians in urban centres are lapping up online term plans. Every 18 minutes, an online term plan is bought in the country.

Everyday, Rs 50 crore worth of insurance cover is sold through this channel. In the past six months, the seven life insurance companies that offer such term plans have issued more than 14,500 policies with a combined insurance cover of about Rs 9,100 crore. This is almost equal to the total cover offered by all new policies sold by the five newest insurance companies ( Star Union Daiichi, Shriram Life, IndiaFirst, DLF Pramerica and Sahara Life) in 2010-11.

The large cover offered by online plans is good news for an underinsured country like India. In a recent survey of middle-class people in metros by ING Life India, 85% of the respondents said they felt a greater need to protect their lifestyle. Yet, the average life insurance policy issued in 2010-11 gave a cover of just Rs 1.93 lakh.

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