Dubai, Oct 27 (IANS) Life Insurance Corp of India (LIC) International has for the first time started selling policies to non-Indians in Bahrain, where it posted a growth of 46 percent in the first nine months of this year, as compared to the corresponding period last year.
“While so far almost all of our 72,000 customers have been Indians, we being an Indian company, but now we have started to sell our schemes to others,” LIC chairman T.S. Vijayan said during the course of the company’s 61st board meeting in that Gulf nation.
Bahrain is home to around 290,000 expatriate Indians.
Vijayan told the Gulf Daily News newspaper that after securing government approval, LIC has sold its custom-made policies to around 100 Bahrainis so far.
Stating that Bahrain has been in the forefront of LIC’s international operations, he said: “In the next few months, we expect to see this figure (of 100 Bahrainis) rise dramatically since we are a company which give the highest bonus on such policies.”
He added the company has declared the highest bonus in the Gulf region at $26 per $1,000 sum assured.
The company paid around $19 million in claims to 3,328 policyholders last year.
According to LIC chief, the ongoing global financial crisis has not affected the insurance sector so far.
“The industry will be affected if and when people start losing jobs and facing huge salary cuts. That has not happened in a big way so far,” Vijayan said.