LIC plans Rs2 lakh crore investment this fiscal

India’s largest life insurer, Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), will invest at least Rs2 lakh crore in the current financial year across all asset classes. Last year the total investment was Rs1.91 lakh crore.

In the current financial year, LIC has already invested Rs26,000 crore across assets as on May 31 — Rs 363 crore has been invested in equity.

The total amount to be invested in equity in the whole financial year will depend on the flow of money. “How the money is invested between equity and other classes will depend upon the flow of premium,” said N Mohan Raj, executive director (investment operations), LIC.

He also said that the investment strategy has not been changed, but LIC may look at new asset classes to invest in. He did not elaborate on the new asset classes.

LIC was not among the 14 companies that were barred by Sebi to sell unit linked insurance plans (ULIPs). As a result, Raj said LIC’s ulip sales have gone up, without giving details.

Funds under management in ulips for LIC were at Rs1,80,491 crore as on March 31, 2010.

The corporation has more than 14 lakh agents across the country who contacted more than 6 crore people last year. “We sold 3.83 crore new individual policies last year,” said T S Vijayan, chairman, LIC at the signing of a deal with Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).

LIC thus became the first institution other than the state governments to sign the MoU with UIDAI. It will provide basic details like name, gender, address, birthdate and parents’ names from its huge database for the UID project. “LIC will be able to uniquely identify its customers,” said Vijayan.

For the UID project it means speedy processing. “We do not have access to the policy holders’ data with LIC. They will be giving us information from only 3 to 4 fields we need. This is a part of multiple registry strategy that will help in enrolling as many people as we can,” said Nandan Nilekani, chairman, UIDAI.