OREANDA-NEWS. Thanks to an increase in the working population and life expectancy, the life insurance industry of India will soon witness robust growth, feels Amitabh Tapadar, chief marketing officer, Tata AIA Life Insurance Company (Tata AIA Life).

According to an industry estimate*, by the year 2020 more than a 100 million people will be added to India's working force. The total size of the working population in India, which stood at 521 million in 2011, is estimated to grow to 627 million by 2020. Life expectancy, which stood at 67 years between the years 2006-10, will reach 70 years between 2016-20.

Mr Tapadar said, “The increase in working population will also result in higher demand for saving and protection-centric life insurance products. As research suggests, with a share of 23 percent for the financial year 2011-12, insurance products have been the second-largest component of household savings*, which represents the amount of disposable income that the households are left with that is not used for consumption expenditure.”

Shivdutt Das, vice president, product development, Tata AIA Life, said, “The ongoing uncertainties in the global economic scenario make income protection a key concern for today. In keeping with this, Tata AIA Life has launched a bouquet of solutions, which provide income protection and satisfy the varying needs of the customers. All these solutions allow customers to avail higher protection cover than earlier. These new offerings also provide other benefits such as guaranteed returns, liquidity, compounding of returns and flexibility of plan duration.”

To make the purchase of life insurance simple and easy, Tata AIA Life has introduced some new processes. The company is one of the first insurance companies in India to fully switch over to a 'standard proposal form' for all its products, thereby offering its customers the convenience of faster and easier completion of applications. It also launched the 'Express 50' initiative, which enables customers to buy a higher protection cover faster by optimising the requirements of documents through simpler underwriting norms.

According to a report by Indian Brand Equity Foundation, higher personal disposable incomes would result in higher household savings, which is expected to grow to USD 540 billion by 2015 from USD 89 billion in 2000. This means that India continues to remain a country of savers, however a large portion of this household savings is either lying idle or getting invested in traditional methods of savings and investment. Life insurance is hence a potent financial weapon that helps provide financial protection and also helps achieve life's cherished goals.

Armed with the right products and right processes, Tata AIA Life is hence poised to be an integral part of the potential growth story of life insurance in India.