There is a landmark heading for the Indian capital markets. Life Insurance Corp of India, known locally as LIC, is one of those Indian state-owned companies whose numbers are hard to fathom. It has 280 million policies in force from 250 million policyholders, a constituency that, were it a sovereign state, would rank as the fifth most populous country in the world.
LIC has more agents than there are people in Birmingham or Amsterdam: 1.35 million as of March 31, 2021. It has 109,000 employees, 2,000 branches and a further 1,500 satellite offices, bedecked in iconic blue and yellow.
It is India writ large, and its IPO has been two years in the making, with 10 underwriters given equal billing on the deal’s top line. If it goes ahead in March – and the government really wants it to, to get its revenues into the financial year that ends on March 31 – it is expected to raise as much as $10 billion equivalent.
