Max Life India Protection Quotient Survey 6.0: Find Out How Aware India is about Term Insurance

IPQ Survey or the India Protection Quotient Survey is a study which is conducted across the urban India’s demographic, in collaboration with KANTAR – a leading marketing data and analytics company. In this survey, a set of questions are asked from the participants and then on the basis of their answers, a score known as India Protection Quotient is generated.

The idea of this study is to find out the protection quotient, ranging from 0 to 100 of individuals living in different parts of the India. The higher this number, the better is the financial protection and awareness of an average urban Indian. In the previous survey, IPQ 5.0, the quotient came out to be 43. This time, the IPQ 6.0 stands at 45, which is two point up the last score. This is certainly a positive curve. Let’s understand more about the different aspects of the Max Life IPQ 6.0 in the sections below.

The participants of IPQ 6.0 consisted of 4700 households spread across 25 cities across India. Max Life Insurance, with KANTAR, covered different types of respondents, such as:

• Male & Female

• Salaried & Self-Employed

• Age Bracket of 25-55 years old

• Millennials & Non-Millennials

• Gen Z Segment, a new addition in IPQ 6.0

A new tool, NCCS (New Consumer Classification System), was used in this survey to classify the different types of consumers in India.

The following metrics with the results (all out of 100) were considered in IPQ 6.0:

• Protection Index

• Knowledge Index

• Security Level

• LI Ownership Level

The cities covered in this survey comprised of 6 metros, 9 tier 1 and 10 tier 2 cities, namely:

1. Metro Cities: Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore.

2. Tier 1 Cities: Ludhiana, Jaipur, Lucknow, Bhopal, Patna, Ahmedabad, Pune, Vishakhapatnam and Bhubaneshwar.

3. Tier 2 Cities: Dehradun, Moradabad, Guwahati, Bokaro, Raipur, Ujjain, Tiruchirappalli, Hubli-Dharwad and Jamnagar.

The following are the key findings of IPQ 6.0 as compared to IPQ 5.0 and IPQ 1.0:

The following are the key findings of IPQ 6.0 as compared to IPQ 5.0 and IPQ 1.0:

The following are the key findings of IPQ 6.0 as compared to IPQ 5.0 and IPQ 1.0:

As we can see from the data tabulated above, the protection index is at its highest at 45 currently as compared to 2 points lower recorded in IPQ5.0 and the even lower 35 of IPQ 1.0. On the other hand, the security level has gained 2 points from IPQ 5.0 but compared to the first survey of 1.0, it is still a point low. As far as the Knowledge Index and LI Ownership Level is considered, both stand at their best of 61 and 75, respectively since IPQ 1.0 was conducted.

Along with these metrics, the following are the other findings of IPQ 6.0:

• Savings Objectives: Out of the four prime saving objectives, namely, child education, child marriage, old age security/retirement and buying house, education of one’s kid(s) remains the top goal of the respondents.
• South tops it for the 6th time: Although the overall IPQ is at 45, if we look at the sectional protection index of India, South India tops it with a score of 49 out of 100, followed by West at 46, North at 41 and East at 40.
• Owning a Life Insurance Plan gains priority: Talking of the LI ownership level, we can see an increase of 2 points from the previous 5.0 survey. Another fact that came to light was that urban working women are more vigilant and proactive regarding life insurance compared to their male counterparts. Interestingly, for the first time, the protection index of both working men and women reached 47.
• Millennials Vs. Non-Millennials Vs. Gen-Z: As much as it might surprise the readers, there hasn’t been a stark difference in the protection index, knowledge index and security index of millennials, non-millennials and Gen-Z. Contrary to the popular notion, Gen-Z is quite alert regarding their finances, be it the awareness part or the action part. However, when it comes to owning life insurance, Gen-Z is still 10 points behind Non-Millennials at 79, whereas millennial respondents scored 75.

When we talk of term insurance and urban India, the following scores were recorded in IPQ 6.0:

The biggest barrier, once again proves to be the high premium cost. The next big factor that came up in IPQ 6.0 is other active investments. This is followed by the people’s inclination towards owning a health insurance as compared to a life insurance. The last significant barrier in owning a term plan is lack of resources to buy a term plan.

IPQ 6.0 shows that awareness and ownership level of life insurance products is growing in India. Moreover, there is an increase in riders that augment plain vanilla insurance plans, which is definitely a positive development. That said, the pace of growth is still pretty slow and there is still some way to go before the average Indian not only get adequate protection but also clearly understands the benefits and limitations of the life insurance plan they have purchased.