INSURING GROWTH

WITH AUM AT A RECORD ₹57.23 LAKH CRORE, LIC REINFORCES ITS POSITION AS INDIA'S MOST DOMINANT INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR AND INSURANCE BEHEMOTH.

- BY NAVNEET DUBEY

ON JANUARY 20, 2025, 452,839 agents of Life Insurance Corp. of India (LIC) fanned out and sold 588,107 policies, earning the corporation a Guinness World Record for the "Most Life Insurance Policies Sold in 24 Hours". The unique name chosen for the day was “Mad Million Day”.

When Siddhartha Mohanty, the-then CEO and MD, announced the feat during the FY25 earnings call on May 27, 2025, his voice carried the quiet pride of a man who knew the machine was still unmatched in sheer scale. “Before I proceed further,” he told analysts, “I would like to mention that the procurement of individual new business premium of ₹62,495 crore is the highest ever in the history of LIC.”

That record-breaking January day and record-breaking full-year individual new business number is visible proof that the giant still knows how to move when it chooses to.

But the real story is the rapid, deliberate shift from low-margin participating products to high-margin nonparticipating ones. Participating policies share profits with bonuses, while nonparticipating ones offer guaranteed benefits.

Around five months into his tenure, on November 6, 2025, R. Doraiswamy, who took over as CEO and MD in July, addressed analysts for the H1FY26 results. The tone was the same: calm, confident, understated. But the message was sharper.

“Regarding the upper limit where non-par share may peak, we had suggested that we have enough wind behind our sails and the momentum has been built in favour of non-par product mix change,” Doraiswamy said. That the share of individual non-par APE (annualised premium equivalent) mix stood at 36.31% is a testimony to the momentum.

In just 18 months (from 18.32% in FY24 to 27.69% in FY25 and 36.31% in H1FY26), LIC has engineered one of the fastest product-mix pivots, a quiet revolution no one saw coming from a 69-year-old government behemoth.