New business premium (NBP) of life insurance companies rose 22.4% year-on-year (Y-o-Y) to Rs 38,958.1 crore in July, aided by strong growth at state-owned Life Insurance Corporation (LIC).

While LIC registered a 22.72% YoY growth in NBP to Rs 22,617.64 crore, supported by healthy growth in group single premiums, private life insurers registered a 22.02% YoY growth in NBP to Rs 16,340.41 crore, also helped by growth in the individual segment.

SBI Life Insurance, the largest private sector life insurer, reported a 27% Y-o-Y growth in NBP to Rs 3,802.6 crore in July. Meanwhile HDFC Life Insurance recorded 13.16% Y-o-Y growth in NBP to Rs 3,054.15 crore during the same time, and ICICI Prudential Life Insurance posted 8.31% Y-o-Y growth to Rs 1,906.3 crore. Other major private players including Axis Max Life Insurance posted 13.3% Y-o-Y growth in NBP, while Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance saw 3.70% Y-o-Y drop in premiums.

Interestingly, life insurance companies saw a decline of nearly 4.6% in the sale of policies in July to 22.8 million, LIC policy sales declined by 10.2% to 14.62 million, while private sector insurance companies saw a rise of 7.23% in the sale of policies to 8.16 million.

During the April-July period of FY25, life insurance companies' premiums grew by 9% year-on-year to Rs 1.35 trillion, with LIC growing by 8.11% year-on-year to Rs 82,028.32 crore and private insurance companies reporting a 10.5% year-on-year increase in premiums to Rs 50,474.3 crore.

So far in FY25, LIC's market share was 61.9%, compared to 62.4% in the same period last year. The share of private insurance companies in NBP was 38%, compared to 37.6% last year.