KATHMANDU:Â Insurance companies in Nepal have sold more than 8.58 million life-insurance policies by the end of the last Fiscal Year 2020/21 which is an increase of 8.4 per cent against the numbers sold the previous fiscal.
In FY 2019/20, only 7.92 million policies were sold. According to the Nepal Insurance Board (NIB), the statistics also includes the number of Foreign Employment term insurance which came down by 32.9 per cent in the last fiscal. Only 577,410 foreign employment term insurance policies could be sold in 2020/21 down from 860,519 policies.
This product witnessed a sharp decline due to the obstructions in the cross-border movement and flight services, and business shutdown which disturbed the movement of people for jobs abroad said the Insurance Board.
However, fewer policies of non-life insurance were sold last year. Non-life insurance companies sold 214,837 policies which were just a 0.17 per cent increase from the previous year. There are 19 life insurance, 20 non-life and two re-insurance companies in Nepal. With the increased number of policies, the income of insurance companies has also gone up significantly.
They collected Rs. 19.6 billion in premium by mid-July this year. Their premium income was Rs. 15.7 billion by mid-July 2020. It is the growth of 24.52 per cent. However, life insurance companies’ premium growth was higher than the non-life companies with 27.38 per cent and 10.74 per cent respectively.