Über die Versicherung der Inder. Indische Lebensversicherung 1874 bis 1988

The work deals with the development of life insurance in India from its earliest establishment. It turns out that the first transfer of knowledge from the UK was done by a group of Scottish businessmen. The establishment of mortality classes, which were not influenced by racial criteria, enabled the insurance of natives. Leading insurance company was up to the 1950s the Oriental Life Assurance Company Governmental Security. Indications are their market share, threads of their mortality tables, as well as the special importance was attached by the report of their chairman Cowasjee Jehangir. Indian insurance companies had superseded British and international insurance companies in India at the inter war period. By the Insurance Act of 1938, which is based heavily on the model of Canada, India got an autonomous legislative framework. Here an economic decolonization had taken place already before the Second World War. The nationalisation of the life insurance in 1956 was not sufficient to exclude foreign competitors from the market; rather it was a reaction to the dubious business practices of a minority of Indian life insurance companies. In its follow-up the nationalisation led to the absence of necessary renewal and extension steps of the Indian life insurance industry. Examples are the non-implementation of new types of insurance (health insurance), the lack of expansion of life insurance to other target groups (people with a particularly high risk, poor social classes, or women) and non-establishment of computers. The Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), which was founded after the nationalisation, had to balance between the needs of the market, the expectations of the politic and the interests of their employees. If in doubt, the LIC follow the expectations of the politic and avoided confrontations with employees. Merely in the 1980s, the needs of the market were again moved increasingly to the fore. Only at the outside the LIC seemed to be a single entity. At the inside the individual levels developed a considerable degree of autonomy. It had been a goal of nationalisation to spread life insurance to more rural areas. Although the LIC opened many branch offices, the proportion of rural regions in the overall business seceded. The private life insurance companies before nationalisation had been pushing its rural business less, but were here more successful. For a large part of India´s policyholders their pension and the care for the education of the children were major reasons to assure. Immediately after the nationalisation life insurance was not able to fulfil these insurance needs. For the first time the ‘Money back scheme’ of the 1970s, which combined death and endowment insurance, enabled insurance for that. Here Indian life insurance technology took for the first time its own way. The liberalization of the insurance industry in the 1990s was not in response to efforts by the IMF, but was a result of pressure from within the industry. A stronger orientation of the management towards the United States was a key trigger of the reforms. Today India’s insurance industry unifies the tradition of its specific Indian insurance history as well as the methods of the international insurance companies which have entered the market since liberalisation.