MUMBAI : Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) invested ₹46,850.33 crore in equities in the first 10 months of FY20, down 20.75% from the amount invested in the same period last fiscal year, according to official data. The state-owned insurer had invested ₹59,115.67 crore in the April-January period of FY19. According to LIC, its profit in the first 10 months of FY20 from investments in equities rose 42.36% to ₹23,273.85 crore, from ₹16,348.81 crore a year ago . During the period under consideration, domestic institutional investors (DIIs) including mutual funds and insurance firms, had invested ₹56,827.37 crore in the stock markets, while the benchmark Sensex rose 5.3%. DIIs were net buyers of equities worth ₹86,605.25 crore in the first 10 months of FY19, while the Sensex climbed 10%. According to a press statement, LIC breached the ₹1.5 trillion mark in new business premium for the first time ever in the 10-month period to maintain its dominant position in the industry, growing 17.48% year-on-year in terms of first-year premium to ₹45,199 crore. It registered 29.42% year-on-year increase in the number of policies sold to 19,585,635. So far in FY20, the state-owned insurer paid 14,293,289 maturity claims amounting to ₹69,748 crore. It also settled 599,881 death claims amounting to ₹9,866 crore. LIC’s total income grew to ₹2.97 trillion for the 10 months ended 31 January 2020, up 17.79% from ₹2.52 trillion in the year-ago period. The state-owned insurer total assets stood at ₹32.2 trillion as of September 2019 compared to ₹29.8 trillion in the corresponding period of 2018, growing 7.92%. In FY19, LIC generated the highest ever total valuation surplus of ₹53,214.41 crore, up 9.9% over the previous year, and paid dividend of ₹2,610.74 crore to the government to break yet another record. Topics