GROWTH OF LIFE INSURANCE BUSINESS: AFTER LIBERALIZATION

The history of insurance in India can be traced with the establishment of a British company called the Oriental Life Insurance Company in 1818, followed by the Bombay Assurance Company in 1823, and the Madras Equitable Life Insurance Society in 1829. It was owned and operated by the British. The first indigenous general insurance company was the Indian Mercantile Insurance Company Limited set up in Bombay in 1907 (Sinha, 2005; Sharma and Agarwal, 2005). The wholly Indian-owned insurance -company, namely, The New India Assurance Company Limited was incorporated on July 23, 1919 which commenced its operations in October the same year (Narayanan, 2006)