Life insurance policies gain popularity

Anuradha Kodagoda

The overall GWP income of all term insurance and general insurance businesses last year was Rs. 58,166 million, according to the IBFL.

Director (Technical) Ceylinco Insurance PLC, Jagath Alwis said during the past five years they had high growth rates in insurance business and it was more than 20 percent annually, but there was a slight drop in last year’s total growth rate. For non-life insurance policies it was 10 percent and life insurance 14 percent.

It’s too early to predict this year’s growth rate, since still we are in the early stage of the second quarter. However, we are confident that we will be able to maintain last year’s growth rate, especially with the new projects which have been implemented in the Northern and Eastern provinces with the dawn of peace”, he said.

“The main reason for last year’s decline was the high inflation which we faced during the second quarter of the year. During the first quarter of this year too we have seen similar trends. However, we are quite confident that this trend will change during the next three quarters in a positive manner”, he said.

Life insurance policies are still not very popular in the country.

“The main reason for this is that as a nation we are still living much closer, especially with our own families. This trend keeps changing daily and life insurance policies are getting popular among the community,”

“People are getting in to more independent lifestyles and identifying the need to have a life insurance policy. Especially, after the tsunami, people realized the importance of having a life insurance policy. On the other hand the climate changes in the country is also one of the reasons and the business community has realized the importance of having a life insurance policy.

We are far behind when compared with the developed countries but today life insurance has became one of the developing insurance policies in the country,” he said.

“Due to the economic recession there was a negative impact on the insurance industry last year since most companies cut down insurance costs. With the dawn of peace in the Northern and Eastern provinces most of the industries can grow in these areas,”

“In Sri Lanka insurance regulations are very strong and the regulator has done an excellent job so far. We always have a good dialogue with the Insurance Board when it comes to implementing new insurance regulations.

Some regulations have been implemented during the past few years such as an examination for insurance agents which is conducted by the Insurance Board of Sri Lanka,” he said.