IDBI FEDERAL LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY

STRATEGIES FOR PENETRATION INTO

RURAL MARKET FOR AN INSURANCE
SERVICE PROVIDER
FINAL REPORT

Submitted by:
Pawar Ankita Sanjay
IIM Indore

Reforms in the life insurance sector have opened up the growth of private players but still their reach in
rural market is comparatively nascent. This potential that exists in the rural market is a great
opportunity for the existing players. The scenario in rural India is dominated by Life Insurance
Corporation of India, a public sector organisation. “The rural market for life insurance is different from
the urban market in terms of needs, income levels and distribution (seasonality for example),
penetration of media, awareness and so on. Except LIC of India, no other player has paid much attention
to the rural sector in spite of their fully meeting the IRDA obligations” (Ranjan Das & Raveendra, 2008).
 IDBI FEDERAL LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY

Table of Contents

1. Executive Summary
2. Acknowledgements
3. Introduction
i. Insurance Sector an Overview

ii. Insurance Industry Structure

iii. Rural Insurance Market

iv. Current Trends in the Indian Life Insurance sector

4. About IDBI Federal Life Insurance Co. Ltd.

i. Products of IDBI Federal Life Insurance Co Ltd

5. Project Proposal
ii. Description of Project in brief

iii. Scope of the Project

iv. Objectives of the Study

6.Methodology/ Data Collection

7. Limitations of the Study
8. Observations/Insights
i. The Main Challenges

ii. Strategies for penetration in the rural segment

9. Conclusion and Recommendation

10. Sample Questionnaire
11. References

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Acknowledgements

I am greatly indebted towards our guide C. Shanthi, Senior Branch Head, IDBI Federal Life
Insurance Company Ltd for her invaluable support. She has constantly encouraged us to
proceed forward during the project and her friendly attitude and approachability helped us
understanding the project better.

We are also grateful to Mr. Jeffery Thomas, Agency Leader, IDBI Federal Life Insurance
Company Ltd for providing us all kind of support during internship, for coordinating with us and
providing relevant data, without which project completion wound not have been possible

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Introduction
India with its huge middle class households has exhibited growth potential for the
insurance industry. Saturation of markets in many developed economics has made the Indian
market even more attractive. India accounts for 16% of the world population but accounted for
only 1.68% of the world life insurance market in 2006. India is also far behind world averages in
terms of insurance penetration, and insurance density. This information clearly indicate that
Indian market is largely untapped for insurance products. In specific, the rural population is
high and there exists high potential for life insurance in this sector. In view of the gap that exists
in the potential vis-à-vis the market captured, the objective of the study is to explore the
reasons for low penetration of insurance products in the rural market.

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Insurance Sector: An Overview

The Indian insurance dates back to the year 1818 where the first insurance company called the
Oriental Life Insurance Company was started in Calcutta to cater to the needs of the British
people when India was under British rule. The company had lots of discrimination towards the
Indian masses where the rates of premium where significantly higher than those rates offered
to the British people. This lead to the formation of the Bombay Mutual Life Assurance Society in
the year 1870, the first Indian established insurance company. Many more insurance companies
where formed during the 20th century. In the year 1912, the Life Insurance Companies and the
Provident Fund Acts were enacted for the purpose of regulating the insurance business in India.
The Life Insurance Act 1912 made it mandatory that only an actuary can certify the premium
rates and the valuation of the companies. The oldest existing company in India is the National
Insurance Company that was established in the year 1906 which is still in business.

In the 19th of January 1956, the government of India issued an ordinance of nationalizing of the
Life Insurance sector and that was the year where the Life Insurance Corporation of India was
established. The LIC of India took over around 154 Indian insurance companies, 16 Non-Indian
insurance companies and 75 provident fund societies, overall it was 275 insurance companies.
In the year 1975, an Act was enacted for the nationalizing of the General Insurance Business by
the Indian parliament. Around 107 general insurers were made into 4 major companies namely
the National Insurance Company Ltd, the New India Assurance Company Ltd, the Oriental
Insurance company Ltd and the United India Insurance Company Ltd. The General Insurance
Corporation of India (GIC of India) was established in the year 1971 and started its operations in
the year 1973.

Until 1990s the LIC of India had all the monopoly power for selling insurance policies to its
customers. After LPG in the year 1991, the doors were opened for private sector players to
setup their insurance businesses. Even GIC was the only general insurance company with its
four subsidiaries. These four companies were then de-linked from the GIC of India and run as
four independent insurance companies. Some private players in the lie insurance include, IDBI
Federal Life Insurance Co Ltd, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance and Max Life Insurance.

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Insurance Industry Structure:

According to the survey conducted, the Indian insurance sector amounted around USD $72
billion. India has a population of 1 billion people but only 0.2% that is only 2 million people have
been covered under Mediclaim insurance. With the oncoming private players in this sector,
there is huge untapped market for the insurance sector to grow. Currently there are 24 life
insurance companies and 28 general insurance companies and one national reinsurer. The
sector is expected to have Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 15-17% for the fiscal
year 2017-18. Employee State Insurance Corporation (ESIC), Rosgaar Krishi Bhima Yojana (RKBY)
etc. provide services in insurance in niche markets. Nowadays, number of diseases and ailments
are in the rising trend and the fee charged in hospitals are exorbitantly high and not affordable
for the common man. So the need for health/medical insurance has increased considerably and
it is becoming a separate branch in insurance and in future an individual has to allocate 25%-
30% of his/her earnings for the same. At this stage, medical/health insurance coverage comes
in handy for such situations.

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Five Forces Analysis:

 Threat of new entrants- High

The threat for new entrants lies within the industry itself. Some companies are
operating in the niche area of underwriting insurance. They are running the threat of
being squeezed out by big players. Another threat is other financial services companies
entering the market.

 Bargaining power of suppliers- Medium

For the insurance industry, the source of funds is the premium paid by its customers,
hence intertwining the customer & suppliers here. The suppliers of funds here, hence
have the option of choosing from various insurance agencies. However, the insurance
agencies cannot reduce the premiums below a minimum support level. Thereby, the
bargaining power of suppliers is medium

 Bargaining power of buyers- Moderate to High

There are 2 types of buyers/consumers- individual and corporate. Large corporate

clients who pay millions of dollars in premium have a lot more bargaining power than
individual clients. As a whole, the buyers have moderate to high bargaining power

 Threat of substitutes- Low

There is no real threat of substitutes for the insurance industry. However, PPF and PF
can act as low level substitutes.

 Intensity of Rivalry- High

Insurance has become more of a commodity. The Insurance companies with low cost
structure, better customer service and greater efficiency will be able to beat out its
competitors. Considering that more than 50 companies exist in this sector, the intensity
of competition would definitely be high.

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Rural Markets and Insurance:

Almost 72% of Indian population resides in villages, with over 80% of them earning less
than Rs. 6000/- per month. Need for protection by way of insurance is tremendous, given the
scale of operations. 70% of India lives in rural areas but have no access; or have negligible
access to insurance. Due to wide geographical disparity and high distribution costs, insurers
have been chary of venturing into this territory. With increasing rural incomes and improving
infrastructure, rural and micro insurance offers immense possibilities. But with opportunities,
this sector throws various operational challenges as well, for the insurers - rural and social
sector insurance should not be approached as a legal or statutory requirement, but as a
business opportunity. With proper safe guards, this sector can contribute immensely to the top
line as well as bottom line.
There exists a huge savings market which after potential for expansion of life insurance
and awareness level is very high but real purchase is low due to absence of market reach and
probably due to lack of financial literacy. Most of this growth is from the urban areas. The
increase in competition is forcing insurance providers to look beyond urban centers and take
their trade to the more challenging rural hinterlands of the country, where only 3% of the
population of more than 720 million people have any form of life insurance coverage.
Insurance is bought lesser in India by rural population. General insurance is often
bought because there are compulsions under the law or from the financiers asking for
insurance as collateral security. In the case of life insurance, there is very little compulsion. The
tendency is to defer the decision. The possibility of death is ignored by the rural people;
however there is more possibility of such misfortune for people lives in rural areas. The rural
people never believe that they can succumb to destiny and they think they will live a long and
healthy life. The rural population in India is without life insurance cover and this part of the
population is also subject to weak social security and pension systems with hardly any old age
income security. It is an indicator that growth potential for the insurance sector is immense.
The buying behaviour of rural consumer is influenced by the income levels and
distributions and marketers efforts on promotional activities. The rural customers are risk
avoider therefore insurance cannot apply the similar methodology that they apply to launch

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products in urban areas. Within the rural sector, however there are vast variations in socio-
economic profiles. The entire population is spread over 6,30,000 villages across the vast
expanse of the country. The income distribution amongst these is highly skewed with some of
the villages reaping the rewards of agricultural revolution and enjoying similar standards of
living like their urban counterparts, while a bulk of villages are still grappling with the basic
issues of electricity and water. These variations are not only at the regional level, but even
within the state and the district. The income patterns too are diverse.
Penetration in rural would be attainable only if the organizations keep in mind the psyche
of rural consumers, the cultural and social dynamics and above all cater to the diverse yet
unique requirements of this segment.

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Current Trends in the Indian Life Insurance Sector:

According to ICRA, the Indian life insurance sector experienced a growth of 15% in the financial
year of 2016-17 after computing the performance of nine life insurance companies, one from
public sector and eight from private sector. These companies represent around 87% of the
Annualized Premium Equivalent of the life insurance industry during the first nine months of
the financial year 2016.

During the period the life insurance sector grew at 6% year on year basis on contrast to fall in
growth of 9% in the financial year 2015 by having stood at Rs 37300 crores as against Rs 35000
crores in the financial year of 2015. The private sector players grew at 13% year on year, LIC
experienced a growth to 1% in the financial year of 2016 as against drop in growth of 24% drop
in growth in the financial year 2015.

For past few quarters LIC experienced a poor performance in APE due to the decrease in the
regular premium collections and the poor performance of the ULIP products as there was
backdrop of the domestic share market. In the financial year of 2015, the regular premium
segment lessened by 27% year on year and the volume was Rs 23000 crores but in the financial
year of 2016 the fall in percentage reduced to 4% year on year.

The LIC’s regular premium segment had a 4% growth year on year during that period while the
private players experienced a growth of 12% year on year.

Some provisions made by the union budget of 2017-18 for the insurance sector are:
 The budget has made provisions for the easy payment of subsidies in the premiums of
Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) and the number of beneficiaries will
increase to 50% in the next 2 years from 20%.
 Post demonetization the demand for insurance products will increase due to the shift of
people’s preferences from formal investment.
 The digital India movement used to urge the insurance companies to influence rural
masses to by policies using digital media for advertisement.

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About IDBI Federal Life Insurance Co. Ltd

IDBI Federal Life Insurance Co Ltd. is a three way joint-venture of IDBI Bank, an Indian
development and commercial bank; Federal Bank, one of India’s leading private sector banks
and Ageas, a multinational insurance giant based out of Europe.

IDBI Federal distributes its products through a multi-channel network consisting of Insurance
agents, Bancassurance partners (IDBI Bank, Federal Bank) Direct channel, and Insurance
Brokers.

History of IDBI Federal Life Insurance Company Limited

In the year 2006, a MoU was signed among three companies that is IDBI Bank, Federal Bank and
the Belgian-Dutch insurance major called Fortis Insurance International to start a life insurance
company in India. The IRDA issued a license in the year 2007.

The company was named IDBI Fortis Life Insurance Co Ltd and it began its operations in the year
2008. The company collected a premium of Rs 100 crore in whopping five months making it the
fastest growing new private sector life insurance company.In the year 2010 the company was
renamed as IDBI Federal Life Insurance Co Ltd. In record time of 5 years the company declared
its maiden profits which was one of fastest in its industry. In the fiscal year 2013-14 it had a
profit of Rs 80 crore and has maintained its profit margins ever since.

In a recent report, published by IRDAI, IDBI Federal has been mentioned as the only life
insurance company to have retained over 50% of our customers for over 5 years, evidence of
our constant focus on post sale engagement. IDBI Federal has been declared among the top 10
most trusted life insurance brands in the country, as per Economic Times’ Brand Equity survey.
What is notable is the fact that we are the only second generation life insurance company to
feature in the list. In a short time, we have made significant progress to gain the trust of people.

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Products of IDBI Federal Life Insurance Company Limited

 Online Plans

 Term Plans

 Savings Plans

 Child Plans

 ULIP Plans

 Retirement Solutions

 Group Plans

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 IDBI FEDERAL LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY

Project Proposal

 Title of the Project

Strategies for penetration into rural market for an insurance service provider.

 Description of the project in brief

There is a gap between the rural potential available in terms of life insurance business and the
potential tapped (only 25% of the rural people are covered by any type of life insurance). The
existing studies reveal that there is less research on the rural insurance market. Insurance
products are uniform for both and urban and rural consumers. The needs of rural consumers
are not yet addressed.

 Area of the Project

Insurance sector and rural market

 Objectives of the Project:

 To get an overview of the reasons for low penetration of private players in the rural
market.
 Understanding the rural market for life insurance in terms of needs, income levels and
distribution (seasonality for example), penetration of media, awareness and so on.

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Methodology
In order to collect data from the respondents two focused group discussions will be
conducted in the rural areas. In-depth interviews with some of the rural people will also be
conducted in order to understand their socio-economic and financial status. Focused group
discussions will be based on their opinions about insurance (focusing on life insurance as well),
availability of insurance in the rural sector and identifying the challenges that would come while
providing the insurance facilities to the customers. The objective of using this methodology is to
understand the reasons for low penetration of insurance in to the rural sector and
recommending strategies for insurance service providers to enter the rural market.

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Limitations of the study:

For the purpose of the study secondary data is procured from IRDA journals and
annual reports of the various life insurance companies as at March 31, 2009 and also relied on
various departmental manuals of the insurers, news paper reports and insurance websites.
Primary data are collected to know the rural perspective for non-penetration of insurance
products. For this purpose, two rural areas of Maharashtra, namely, Naydongri (rural) and
Chalisgaon (Semi-urban) are selected for the study.

Since the present research is intended to study the rural life insurance market and
the reasons for low insurance penetration, the research design adopted is ‘exploratory’ or

‘formulative’ research and the major emphasis is on the discovery of ideas and insights.

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Observations/Insights from the study:

Following are the key insights gained after conducting in-depth interviews an
focused group discussion in two villages. The summarisation of the points is as follows:

 Primary data collection and interaction suggests that customers in rural areas do
not trust private life insurance companies as much as they trust the public sector
LIC of India.

 Socio demographic and economic factors namely age, gender, marital status, level of
education, household annual income, occupation and family size have a significant
impact on the decision making. Age is one of the most important criteria considered
while buying insurance policies.

 In the case of gender, females are not given due importance because of male
dominating nature of society in India.

 Education level of rural customer’s has significant impact on perception towards

insurance services. This may be because education leads them to secure their life.

 Household annual income came as a significant variable to influence the perception

towards insurance services in the study conducted among Indian rural people.

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The Main Challenges

 Awareness and Education: The biggest challenge in insurance company is to
change the perception of the customer. This can be done by spreading awareness
about how insurance works in principle. Training and education, a high level of
awareness about insurance is must. Insurance is largely seen as a risk cover
instrument and not much as investment option.

 Reasons for taking life insurance policies are common like daughter's marriage,
children's education, etc. Respondent agreed that the benefit of non-life issuance is
security of assets, despite its low penetration and mandatory nature.

 Documentation and Certification: Some of the basic documents provided to the

insurance companies by the rural people are age proof, FIR, death certificate, etc.
still norms and documentation process should be comparatively simple for the rural
areas. Crop insurance, insurance against animal's life etc. needs special attention
and simpler yet effective documentation.

 Distribution Channels for Rural Network: The insurance agents play an

important role in creating awareness, motivating purchase and rendering other
rural insurance services. Agent's contribution in distribution of insurance policies in
rural and semi-urban market is significant and remarkable. The new companies
need support of at least a limited agent network for their delivery system. Cost
effective options exist for leveraging existing rural institutions for delivery of
insurance products and services.

 Customer Perceptions: Customer behaviour in rural sector is influenced by

environmental factors as well as intrinsic personal aspirations. The environmental
factors are socio economic and demographic factors, inputs of insurance advisors,
the company’s efforts to manage customer satisfaction and experience.

 Untapped Market Segments: It is important to increase the customer base in semi-

urban and rural areas which offer a huge potential. The fact that a major chunk of
business for LIC comes from these areas stand as a testimony to this indisputable
fact. There are difficulties in approaching this segment which takes us back issues of
customer education.

 Human Resource Management: The insurance market is now filled with players,
who are mature, globally prominent and big players in the transnational

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competitive global competitive insurance market. Each of them has ability to

influence the market. The human resource competency is another big challenge.

 Managing the Regulatory Authority: As the competition acute, the customer

becomes more vulnerable to the complexities on market environment. The
regulators have a dual responsibility. They have to ensure that the insurer adheres
to sound insurance principles and practices as well as maintains adequate financial
resources to meet their liabilities.

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Strategies for penetration into rural market:

 Rural market can be highly profitable if one is able to carefully plan and tailor an entire
set of low cost activities of advertising, distribution, and product design etc. to
successfully exploit the potential.

 Marketing of life insurance is not mere selling. It involves trust building, identification of
financial knowledge gap and personalised service content strategy.

 The approach, the product and the distribution needs to have a different look than that
followed for the urban market. The major reason revealed by the primary research and
the customers is the non availability of right insurance product for rural need.

 The other reason is the traditional mindset that exists among the customers towards
LIC. Trust being the major factor has not paved way for private insurance companies.
Insurance sales demands trust of the customers.

 Evidence from primary data suggests that customers in rural areas do not trust private
life insurance companies as much as they trust the public sector LIC of India. The
marketers can focus their marketing techniques in generating trust in rural areas.

 The needs of rural customers are different from urban customers. From secondary data,
it is known that except LIC of India, no other insurance company has exclusive rural
centric products.
 Customized Product Design and risk faced, the rural population should be customized
according to the term of pricing, simplicity in product feature, premium paying option
and process requirement.

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Conclusion and Recommendations:

 The three inherent challenges in addressing the needs for rural life insurance are the
product design, distribution and after sales service of those customized insurance
products effectively to reach the benefit of such products to the needy. Therefore, there
is a need to introduce more customized insurance products in the rural sector
(individual and group).

 With the advent of such new customized insurance products, poor people will entice to
have such benefits for future eventualities. The introduction of such products does not
end the obstacles for the development of the life insurance in rural India. The very next
problem is the marketing and distribution of such products.

 Rural India is a huge as the targeted consumers live sparsely. To serve this huge
clientele, we also need alternate set of distribution channels besides agency channel to
reach them and with the present state of penetration of insurers in the rural areas are
not enough to achieve such a colossal task. Though the branch expansion of the insurers
has improved in the post insurance reform period it is still not enough to penetrate
every corner of the rural parts of country.

 In 2008 out of total branches of all life insurers operating in India, only 32% was from
rural areas. The very next and crucial problem is to provide services to the existing
policyholders. Renewal collection is a big problem as in case of low premium policies,
agents don‘t focus on the collection as their commission is meagre.

 Renewal collection is badly affected in case of private life insurers as they don‘t have
good retention of their field force i.e. sales managers and agents.

 In case of micro insurance products, the main factors behind showing less interest by
the Insurers are especially for rural market is high cost of servicing the product and the
difficulty in distribution of micro-insurance products.

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 In India, it is often considered that a micro insurance policy is simply a low-premium

insurance policy. But actually, there are a number of other important factors which
governs the micro insurance policies.

(i) The low-income clients often live in remote rural areas and to serve this clientele, insurers
require a different set of distribution channels and new approaches to marketing and
contracting micro insurance products.

(ii) It is often found that the low-income clients are unfamiliar with the concept of insurance,
especially micro-insurance, requiring a different set of new approaches to contracting to
insurance products.

(iii) There also exist challenges in product design. Due to the lack of a historical database on
claims, compels the insurers to calculate premiums based on imprecisely macro aggregates
which eventually affect the pricing of the product as the insurance companies become
overcautious on margins.

(iv) It is also found that there are very little choices available before the consumers to choose
from. Indian micro-insurance market is yet to offer array of customized products to suit the
needs of the poor.

(v) It is found that the Minimum Amount of Cover‘ requirement in the micro-insurance
products is bit high which prohibit a large segment of the poor from acquiring benefit out of the
micro-insurance products.

According to the study of CGAP Working Groups on Micro-insurance, 2005, there have some
unverified report that few private life insurers are dumping poorly serviced micro- insurance
products to meet the quota requirements and some are stop selling insurance products
(including micro insurance products) once they meet their target (Rural or Social Sectors) which
was specified by the regulator, IRDA.

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Sample Questionnaire:

Q.1. Do you know about various types of insurance? Please name a

few.

Q.2. What are your opinions about life insurance?

Q.3. How important do you feel is life insurance?

Q.4. Which insurance companies do you know about?

Q.5. What is your opinion about private life insurance companies?

Q.6. Please tell us about the insurance agents that provide

insurance services in your area.

Q.7. What are the major loopholes in the current insurance

products provided to the rural people?

Q.8. Please tell us about the marketing campaigns or

advertisements you watch on TV about the insurance companies.
Also tell us what you like about the advertisements.

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References

 https://www.ibef.org/industry/insurance-sector-india.aspx

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance_in_India

 Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDBI_Federal_Life_Insurance

 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/general-
insurance-sector-sees-29-growth-after-note-
ban/articleshow/56216430.cms

 http://www.livemint.com/Money/3kvSmCikYTKlK4e9ZW8MWL/Life-
insurance-industry-set-to-grow-1215-in-FY17-report.html

 https://www.hdfclife.com/iwov-resources/pdf/financial/2015-
16/public/HDFC-Life-Annual-Report-FY-2015-16.pdf

 https://www.hdfclife.com/iwov-resources/pdf/financial/2014-
15/public/HDFC-Life-Annual-Report-FY-2014-15.pdf

 http://www.idbifederal.com/Pages/FinancialStatement.aspx?Year=null

 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2017/01/20/Indian-
Financial-Sector-Structure-Trends-and-Turns-44554

 http://www.sbilife.co.in/sbilife/images/Annual_Report13_14.pdf

 http://www.akinsure.com/images/Industry_Overview_Study-
Strategies_to_grow_the_insurance_industry.pdf
 https://www.inflibnet.ac.in/ojs/index.php/MI/article/view/2248

 http://www.journalijar.com/article/19554/life-insurance:-challenges-and-
opportunities-in-rural-india/

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 http://www.business-standard.com/article/finance/now-a-quarter-of-new-
life-insurance-policies-sell-in-rural-india-114010200563_1.html

 http://www.banknetindia.com/banking/80714.htm

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