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).