125th year celebrations of Postal Life Insurance to be launched

New Delhi, Feb 4 (UNI) To mark the 125th year celebrations of Postal Life Insurance (PLI), a special cover and cancellation will be held here tomorrow.

To mark the quasquicentennial celebrations, PLI has taken significant like management of corpus within the frame work of IRDA investment regulations, upgradation of the computer system and management of data base centrally in the national data centre, and professional training to its sales force and granting licence to the sales force in the pattern of IRDA regulations.

Department of Posts Secretary IMG Khan will release the special cover.

''Introduced on February 1, 1884 for providing Life Insurance coverage to the Postal Employees, the PLI is extended to all employees of the Central Government, including defence and paramilitary personnel, employees of the state governments, public sector undertakings, autonomous bodies, universities, municipalities, nationalised banks,'' an official statment said.

Currently, the number of live policies in PLI exceeds 85 lakh (including the Rural PLI). ''The corpus size is more than Rs 12,500 crore and the total sum assured for all policies (including Rural PLI) comes to more than Rs 31,000 crore,'' the statement said.

The fund is healthy and the current rates of bonus are whole life policies -- Rs 90 for every thousand rupees of sum assured; endowment assurance policies--Rs 70 for every thousand rupees of sum assured; and anticipated endowment policies -- Rs 65 for every thousand rupees of sum assured.

''It was primarily because of high rate of bonus, PLI has succeeded in retaining its niche market, in spite of opening up of the insurance sector and, thereby, increasing competition,'' the statement added.

PLI fund is growing at an average annual rate of 20 per cent and RPLI fund at an average rate of more than 40 per cent in recent years.

PLI concentrates on traditional Life Insurance products and primary focus is coverage of risk and ensuring a decent return to its customers.

Besides whole life, endowment and anticipated policies, PLI offers Yugal Suraksha policies for working couples and offers add on policies for children.

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