Best Life Insurance provider in India – based on Claim Settlement Ratio

Deciding which company to choose for Life Insurance has always been tough and with so many new entrants customers are spoiled for choice. It’s always a dilemma which factors to look at while choosing your life insurance provider – cost, convenience, past performance, claim settlement rate, etc.

I think the most important factor should be tension free claim settlement for your loved ones once you are not there.

And in that case the recent Annual Report (2008-09) from IRDA shows LIC (Life Insurance Corporation) tops the chart. It has claim settlement rate of 95%, which is 5% higher than its nearest competitor Max New York Life with 90% settlement rate. But if you have a look at the premium rates for term plans LIC generally has the highest rate.
So in all you can think of LIC as a costly but still the one with most hassle free settlement for your insurance.

The other thing I could see is Companies with higher number of settled claims have a bit lower claim settlement rate in terms of amount which means that low value claims are settled more easily than higher value claims which makes sense for companies. So the next question is should you have multiple small policies rather than one large value life insurance policy? Think about this – it would cost you more but probably have higher chances of getting claim paid!

I am publishing the chart which for 2008 – 09 which shows the Life Insurance claims filed in a year both in terms of number and amount and the percentage of claims settled, rejected and pending for each company. I hope this would help you to select the right insurance provider for you.

Total Claims for the YearClaims PaidClaims RejectedClaims Pending at the end of Year
# of PoliciesBenefit Amount# of PoliciesBenefit Amount# of PoliciesBenefit Amount# of PoliciesBenefit Amount
LIC5,91,0974,44495%94%1%2%2%3%
Max new York Life3,9387890%85%8%12%2%2%
Birla Sunlife2,7577589%79%10%20%1%1%
HDFC Standard2,8984988%77%5%7%7%17%
Bajaj Allianz12,01121387%82%8%11%4%7%
Reliance Life3,7014687%76%6%9%8%15%
ICICI Pru10,74312887%79%5%7%8%13%
ING Vysya1,5232877%62%8%20%14%17%
Kotak Mahindra1,3002677%63%9%16%14%20%
SBI Life4,2606277%76%15%11%8%13%
Aviva1,4383172%72%19%20%9%8%
Tata AIG2,7004461%64%28%12%11%24%
Metlife7293258%53%23%24%19%23%
Future Generalli30157%59%30%35%13%6%
Bharti AXA203653%52%45%45%2%3%
Sahara439445%49%12%0%43%50%
Shriram7911139%37%24%30%36%32%
Canara HSBC16131%28%19%7%50%65%
IDBI Fortis39131%25%5%4%64%72%
Aegon Religare710%0%71%79%29%21%
DLF PramericaNot Available in 2008 – 09
Star UnionNot Available in 2008 – 09
All Private49,52383582%76%10%13%8%11%
Industry Total6,40,6205,27994%91%2%3%3%5%

I am in process of going through the annual report of IRDA and would publish some interesting facts and figures about Indian Insurance providers in next few days.

You can read about The updated Claim Settlement Ratio for 2010-11 here.

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