Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on the Life Insurance Industry

Abstract

The paper aims to assess the impact of pandemic Covid-19 on Life Insurance Industry based on the perceived impact of the executives working in life insurance industry. This paper also highlights the key areas of impact on the life insurance operations and also suggest measures to improve the growth of life insurance business in the coming years. The study finds that the impact of the pandemic on the traditional life insurance business like term insurance business, endowment business was not impacted much while it has affected significantly group insurance business, annuity and pension business. However, there has been significant improvement about the customer’s insurance awareness, particularly they have become highly health consciousness during the pandemic period. As a result, the demand for health care services including health insurance and term insurance products have gone up. The regulator has also introduced a customized stand alone Corona specific policies and life insurance product simplifying the process of buying the insurance encouraging the customers to improve their insurance coverage. The executive’s perceptions also strongly reflect these trends as they opined that the traditional life insurance and health business would grow strongly, while savings linked insurance products, particularly ULIP, Group business, annuity and pension business would come down significantly. Their feedback strongly emphasis that the insurers should improve their Risk Management initiatives like DRR, disaster risk planning, data protection and cyber security measures, etc., which would enable the insurers come back to the normal life of operations quickly.