Rural Postal Life Insurance: Its Growth and Public Awareness

The Government should pay serious attention to insurance penetration in rural areas as it is abysmally low as compared to urban India. The Government hasauthorized postal department to provide.insuranceservice in rural areas as India has the largest postal network in the world with over 1, 55,000 post offices of which 89.76% are in the rural areas. Rural Postal Life Insurance (RPLI) was introduced in 1993 with the aim of providing low cost insurance operation through the post offices/agents. This empirical and analytical research aims to analyze the growth of RPLI and the public awareness of RPU in rural areas. The growth of RPLI was measured through the number of policies as well as sum assured under RPLI during the period from 2001-2 to 2009-10 and it is reported that the insurance policies have grown at a CAGR of 31.16% and the sum assured has grown at a CAGR of 38.48% for the nine-year period. In addition the study on the awareness of RPLI among the rural public has revealed that there is a significant relationship between awareness of RPLI andeducation, occupation, family income and percent of saving of the rural public.