By A Staff Reporter, Kathmandu, Sept. 4: 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.

Insurance reach 25 per cent

According to the NIB, insurance service has reached 24.99 per cent population up from 22.31 per cent in the previous year. Including the foreign employment term insurance, the total reach of insurance is 26.89 per cent. About 75 per cent of Nepalis are still out of the insurance net.

The NIB said that the total number of offices of insurance companies has increased to 3,061 from 2,772 and the number of employees has gone up to 10,865. Paid-up capital of life insurance companies has reached Rs. 38.21 billion in mid-July this year from 32.81 billion at the same time in 2020. Likewise, the paid-up capital of non-life insurance companies increased by Rs. 2 billion. It reached Rs. 19.46 billion by the last year-end from Rs. 17.4 billion in the previous year.