Life Insurers report muted business growth in February

Life insurers reported muted growth in retail Annual Premium Equivalent (APE) for February 2023, largely due to a decline in retail APE growth of the state-owned Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC).

While the overall retail APE for the industry rose 10.5% on a year-on-year basis, helped by private players expanding at 18%, LIC’s retail APE declined by 3% over the same period.

The low growth resulted from a likely pre-booking of high-ticket non-ULIP policies in February and March 2023 to avoid the impact of taxation change proposed in the FY24 union budget, according to an Emkay report.

The life insurance industry uses retail APE as a metric to measure new business sales by taking the total new business premium (sum of regular premium and 10% of single premium) during a particular period and annualizing it by multiplying it with the premium payment term.