LIC scraps 34 life policies

Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) has decided to stop selling as many as 34 policies from this month, including Jeevan Anand, Jeevan Madhur and Jeevan Saral, to comply with new regulatory guidelines, a senior LIC executive said.

Of the 34 products, LIC will stop sale of Jeevan Amrit from December 7, Jeevan Surabhi from December 14 while two other schemes from December 21 and December 28 respectively.

Remaining 28 policies will go off LIC’s shelves from December 31, 2013.

Last month, LIC had withdrawn 14 policies including Convertible Term Assurance, Children Deferred Endowment Assurance.

These policies are being discontinued as part of regulatory compliance.

 Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irda) had extended the deadline for implementation of new individual product regulations for the life insurance industry by three months to December 31, 2013.

“All the existing group policies and all the existing individual products not in conformity with the provisions of this regulation shall be withdrawn from August 1, 2013, and January 1, 2014, respectively,” Irda had said in a circular.

With regard to group policies, life insurers have been asked not to enroll these policies after the immediate policy anniversary falling due after July 2013.The new regulations are aimed at ensuring.

However, it had said all group policies at the time of renewal of such policy shall be given an option to switch over to the modified version of the group product, if any, once introduced.

LIC has outperformed its peers in the private sector by recording a 7 per cent growth in premium collection during the first half of the current fiscal.The company witnessed a 7.26 per cent growth in premium income to Rs 37,906 crore during the six-month period ending September, 2013.

Earlier, after getting representation by life insurers, the Life Insurance Council had sought extension in the deadline. V Manickam, secretary-general of the Council, had spoken of a good outcome on this front from Irda.