India's insurance industry crossed a landmark ₹4 lakh crore in life insurance new business premium in FY26 (year ended March 31, 2026) for the first time, while non-life insurers wrote ₹3.36 lakh crore in gross direct premium — a run rate accelerated sharply by the government's September 2025 decision to cut GST on individual life and health insurance premiums to nil.
Against that backdrop, this report ranks and profiles India's largest insurance companies by Assets Under Management (AUM), total premium/revenue, and year-on-year growth, using numbers pulled directly from company investor presentations, stock exchange filings, and audited FY26 results — not secondary estimates.
Methodology: How the Rankings Were Compiled
Every figure below is sourced and dated. Two things worth knowing upfront:
- Only listed insurers (and a handful with voluntary investor decks) disclose standalone AUM every quarter. LIC, HDFC Life, SBI Life, ICICI Prudential Life, Axis Max Life (Max Financial Services), ICICI Lombard, Star Health, Niva Bupa, and Go Digit are all listed on the NSE/BSE and publish detailed quarterly investor presentations — that's where the AUM and CAGR figures below come from. Tata AIA and the Bajaj Allianz entities publish partial disclosures via their parent (Bajaj Finserv) or their own websites.
- A genuine "top 50 by AUM" table doesn't exist publicly — and any article claiming to show one for all 50 is estimating or fabricating most of the rows. Roughly 30 of India's ~57 IRDAI-registered insurers (Kotak Life, PNB MetLife, Aditya Birla Sun Life, Canara HSBC, New India Assurance, United India, Oriental Insurance, National Insurance, Tata AIG, Reliance General, Cholamandalam MS, Care Health, Manipal Cigna, IFFCO Tokio, Universal Sompo, Shriram General, Royal Sundaram, Future Generali, Edelweiss Tokio, Liberty General, Acko, and others) are either unlisted, PSU-owned, or subsidiaries of larger groups — they report only annual gross premium figures to IRDAI and the General/Life Insurance Councils, not standalone quarterly AUM or segment-level revenue. We've listed these separately below with what is publicly verifiable (gross premium, market share) rather than inventing AUM numbers for them.
All figures are FY26 (April 2025–March 2026) unless marked otherwise. ₹1 lakh crore = ₹1 trillion = approximately US$11.4 billion at current exchange rates.
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Top Life Insurance Companies in India by AUM, Premium & Growth (FY26)
LIC of India: India’s Largest Insurer by AUM
LIC closed FY26 with an AUM of ₹57.29 lakh crore and a full-year PAT of ₹57,419 crore, up 19.2% on FY25's ₹48,151 crore. Total premium income rose to ₹5,35,984 crore from ₹4,88,148 crore, and the Value of New Business (VNB) margin — the profitability metric insurers care about most — expanded to 21.2% from 17.6%, reflecting LIC's continued shift toward higher-margin non-participating products (60.8% of individual new business by premium in FY26, up from 53.3% in FY25).
LIC still commands 56.7% market share in New Business Premium and held a 57.07% share of First Year Premium Income as of Q3 FY26, with group insurance dominance at 71.36% share. Worth flagging: LIC's AUM briefly touched ₹59.17 lakh crore as of December 31, 2025 (Q3 FY26) before moderating to ₹57.29 lakh crore by March 31, 2026 — a swing driven by equity market volatility late in the fiscal year, the same pattern several other insurers reported in Q4.
SBI Life Insurance: Crossed ₹1 lakh crore in annual premium for the first time
SBI Life's total premium income reached ₹99,955.92 crore in FY26, an increase of 18.91% and just short of the symbolic ₹1 trillion mark. New Business Premium grew 20% to ₹42,550 crore, driven by group savings (+55% YoY) and annuity (+34% YoY).
AUM crossed ₹5 trillion briefly during Q3 FY26 before settling at ₹4,87,160 crore by year-end (a Q4 dip of 4.8% QoQ, again tied to equity/debt market pressure). VNB margin held at 27.5%, among the highest in the industry, and the company maintained a 22.9% private-sector market share in Individual Rated Premium.
HDFC Life Insurance; AUM at ₹3.75 lakh crore, retail protection up 43%
HDFC Life's FY26 annual report shows AUM (including subsidiary HDFC Pension) at ₹3.75 lakh crore, PAT of ₹1,910 crore, and embedded value of ₹62,139 crore. Total reported premium (including renewals) grew 12% YoY, with the standout being a 43% surge in retail protection business — the company's stated strategic priority.
HDFC Life held a 10.8% new business market share, placing it among the top three private life insurers, and 9M FY26 disclosures show individual APE growth of 10% with a 2-year CAGR of 20%.
ICICI Prudential Life Insurance: margin expansion outpaces topline growth
ICICI Prudential Life posted more modest AUM growth (+1.4% to ₹3,13,634 crore) but the strongest profitability story among the large-cap life insurers: PAT jumped 34.6% to ₹1,600.36 crore and VNB margin expanded nearly 200 basis points to 24.7%, aided by a 32.3% full-year jump in retail protection APE.
Total premium income grew 8.5% to ₹53,125 crore. The company marked its 25th year of operations in FY26, having served over 20 crore customers cumulatively.
Axis Max Life Insurance (Max Financial Services): fastest-growing among the top 10
Formerly Max Life, now rebranded Axis Max Life following Axis Bank's strategic stake, this insurer posted the highest premium growth rate among large private life insurers: GWP up 17% to ₹38,877 crore and VNB up 26% to ₹2,647 crore, with new policy counts growing 18% against the private industry's 7% — a 56 bps private market-share gain to 10.4%. AUM reached ₹1,89,795 crore (+8% YoY).
Reported profit was compressed by deliberate new-business strain as the company scales protection and annuity lines; parent Max Financial Services' consolidated PAT came in at ₹106 crore for FY26 even as revenue (ex-investment income) grew 17% to ₹38,039 crore.
Tata AIA Life Insurance: AUM disclosed, income statement not public
Tata AIA reports AUM of ₹1,45,589 crore as of March 31, 2026 directly on its own website, with the company citing 27% YoY AUM growth on a rolling 3-year basis.
As a joint venture entity (Tata Sons–AIA Group) that is not separately listed, Tata AIA does not publish a standalone quarterly income statement, premium, or PAT figure in the public domain — only AUM, claim settlement ratio (99.41% for FY25) and fund-level NAV data are disclosed.
Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance: now fully Bajaj-owned
Following Bajaj Finserv's full buyout of Allianz SE's 26% stake (approved by CCI in March 2025), Bajaj Allianz Life is now wholly Bajaj-owned. Industry-wide data from the Life Insurance Council shows Bajaj Life's FY26 New Business Premium grew 18.7% YoY to ₹14,585.82 crore.
Quarterly disclosures via Bajaj Finserv's investor presentations showed Q1 FY26 shareholders' PAT of ₹171 crore, up 76% YoY. Standalone AUM is not separately broken out in public filings.
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Top General & Health Insurance Companies in India — GWP, Combined Ratio & Growth (FY26)
New India Assurance — India's largest general insurer by premium
The state-owned insurer led the FY26 non-life market with gross premium of approximately ₹42,800 crore and a 13% overall market share, up 11% year-on-year. As India's largest PSU general insurer and the only Indian non-life insurer with a meaningful international book, New India anchors the public-sector segment, which collectively grew premiums 8% to ₹1.03 lakh crore in FY26 (37% market share).
Detailed AUM and PAT figures for New India were not independently verified in the sources used for this report — readers should cross-check directly against the company's investor relations page or IRDAI's annual report for audited figures.
ICICI Lombard General Insurance — retail health the standout growth engine
ICICI Lombard's GDPI grew 7.0% to ₹28,712 crore on a 1/n accounting basis (versus 9.2% industry growth), with the more revealing number being retail health, which grew 65% in Q4 FY26 and 54% for the full year, lifting ICICI Lombard's retail health market share to 4.1% from 3.3%. Combined ratio came in at 103.4% (1/n basis), PAT grew 10.5% to ₹2,772 crore, and Return on Average Equity was 17.8%.
Investment assets stood at ₹58,421 crore as of March 2026, up from ₹53,510 crore a year earlier — effectively the closest public proxy to an "AUM" figure for a general insurer, since general insurers don't report AUM the way life insurers do (their investment book funds claims reserves, not long-duration policyholder funds).
Bajaj Allianz General Insurance — grew premium but missed Q4 targets
BAGIC's Q1 FY26 GWP grew 9% YoY to ₹5,202 crore with PAT up 15% to ₹660 crore; the full FY26 picture (per Cafemutual's market-share ranking) shows gross premium of ₹23,179 crore at a 7% market share, while a separate Whalesbook wrap citing the Bajaj Finserv results describes FY26 GWP at ₹23,330 crore (+8%) with PAT of ₹1,950 crore (+6%) — the small variance between sources reflects different premium-recognition bases (1/n vs N-basis accounting introduced by IRDAI from October 2024).
Q4 FY26 specifically was flagged as a miss versus analyst estimates, with flat GWP growth attributed to pricing pressure in motor and crop insurance.
Star Health & Allied Insurance — underwriting turned profitable
India's largest standalone health insurer (SAHI) delivered GWP of ₹20,369 crore (+16%) and, more notably, flipped from an underwriting loss of ₹165 crore in FY25 to an underwriting profit of ₹206 crore in FY26 — combined ratio improved 236 bps to 98.8%. PAT grew 16% to ₹911 crore, while normalized PAT (adjusting for a Q4 mark-to-market hit) grew 45% to ₹1,222 crore.
Retail health, which makes up roughly 95% of Star Health's book, grew fresh business 37% YoY to ₹4,567 crore. Star Health retains a 31% share of India's retail health insurance market.
SBI General Insurance — fastest-growing large public-sector-linked insurer
SBI General posted gross premium of ₹15,904 crore, up 15% YoY, ahead of both the overall industry (+9%) and most peer general insurers.
Detailed AUM, combined ratio and PAT figures were not independently sourced for this report — SBI General is not separately listed, though its parent SBI discloses subsidiary performance in periodic investor updates.
HDFC ERGO General Insurance — premium fell, profit jumped
HDFC ERGO is the outlier in this list: gross premium declined 5% to ₹15,025 crore, a deliberate outcome of the company scaling back its Motor Third-Party book (a long-tail, reserving-intensive line).
Despite the premium decline, standalone net profit for FY26 rose 62.57% to ₹813.12 crore, up from ₹500.17 crore in FY25 — evidence that the pullback from lower-margin business improved profitability even as topline shrank.
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Go Digit General Insurance — AUM crossed ₹23,000 crore
Go Digit's FY26 GWP grew 16.2% to ₹11,300 crore, with AUM rising to approximately ₹23,000 crore from ₹19,700 crore in FY25. Full-year combined ratio was 105.7% (1.2 percentage points better than FY25) and solvency ratio improved to 2.42x. Q4 standalone PAT (per exchange filing) was ₹149.42 crore, up 29.24% YoY; management separately cited annual ROE of 17.7% on an earnings call.
Digit flagged that its core underwriting business ran an operating loss in Q4 FY26 that was offset by investment income — worth watching for anyone tracking underwriting quality rather than headline profit.
Niva Bupa Health Insurance — fastest premium growth in this list
Niva Bupa's GWP grew 27% to ₹9,433 crore (excluding 1/n adjustment) or ₹8,586 crore (including it), the highest growth rate among all companies profiled here. IFRS PAT jumped 80% to ₹366 crore following the company's transition to Ind AS 117 (Insurance Contracts) accounting, effective April 1, 2026.
Retail health market share rose to 10.1% (+76 bps), and the Combined Insurance Service Ratio (CISR) improved to 101.4% from 103.0% — still short of the 100% breakeven line but moving in the right direction, with Q4 FY26 CISR at 97.4%.
Key Trends Shaping India's Insurance Industry
A few structural factors explain the patterns across nearly every company profiled above, and are worth understanding before drawing conclusions from any single quarter.
GST relief on individual life and health insurance premiums
The single biggest driver of FY26's acceleration: effective September 22, 2025, the government cut GST on individual life and health insurance premiums to nil. The impact is visible almost everywhere in the numbers above — retail health growth in particular (Niva Bupa +27%, ICICI Lombard retail health +54% for the full year and +65% in Q4, Star Health retail fresh business +37%) tracks closely with this policy change, and insurers across the board flagged H2 FY26 as materially stronger than H1 as a direct result.
Growth in retail health insurance
Health insurance was the fastest-growing segment of the non-life market in FY26, expanding 19% to ₹45,866 crore even as the broader general insurance segment grew a more modest 8%. Standalone health insurers (SAHIs) — Star Health, Niva Bupa, Care Health, Manipal Cigna — and the health books of composite general insurers like ICICI Lombard and HDFC ERGO are all capturing this shift, with retail health specifically outpacing group health across nearly every insurer that discloses the split.
Rising demand for protection and annuity products
Across the life insurers profiled here, the product mix is visibly shifting toward pure protection (term) and annuity, away from lower-margin traditional savings. HDFC Life's retail protection grew 43% for the year; ICICI Prudential Life's retail protection grew 32.3%; SBI Life's individual protection grew 24% while annuity NBP grew 34%; LIC's individual non-par APE — which includes much of its newer protection-oriented book — surged 47.44% in 9M FY26. This mix shift is also the main reason VNB margins are expanding across the sector even where topline premium growth is modest (ICICI Prudential Life is the clearest example: AUM grew just 1.4% but PAT grew 34.6%).
Private insurers gaining market share
While LIC remains dominant in absolute size, private life insurers collectively grew new business premium 14.06% YoY (till February FY26) versus LIC's growth, and on the general insurance side, private multi-line insurers grew GDPI 35.5% YoY versus a marginal 0.4% decline for public multi-line insurers in November 2025 data — though public insurers still gained share on a full financial-year basis in some segments. The pattern is consistent: private insurers with digital-first distribution (Go Digit, Star Health, ICICI Lombard) and bancassurance-heavy models (SBI Life, HDFC Life, Axis Max Life) are converting the GST-driven demand surge into share gains faster than PSU incumbents.
Increasing investor interest in listed insurers
Nine of the companies profiled in detail in this report — LIC, HDFC Life, SBI Life, ICICI Prudential Life, Max Financial Services, ICICI Lombard, Star Health, Go Digit, and Niva Bupa — are listed on the NSE/BSE, and it's precisely their listed status that makes their FY26 numbers independently verifiable in the first place. Go Digit and Niva Bupa are recent IPOs (2024) still building analyst coverage; Star Health has drawn scrutiny over valuation (P/E of ~38x against a sector average closer to 21x) even as its underwriting metrics improve. The broader trend — more insurers going public, more granular quarterly disclosure, more analyst tracking — is itself a structural shift that should make future editions of this kind of report more complete, not less.
News4Bharat POV
LIC's scale still defines the shape of India's insurance market: at ₹57.29 lakh crore in AUM and 56.7% market share in new business premium, it remains roughly 12x larger than the next-biggest life insurer by AUM, even as its own growth rate trails the private sector's.
That gap is narrowing, though — private life insurers grew new business premium faster than LIC through most of FY26, and private general insurers are converting the GST-driven demand surge into share gains more quickly than their PSU counterparts.
Health insurance is the clearest growth story in the entire industry: retail health premium grew faster than any other segment across nearly every insurer in this report, from Niva Bupa's 27% GWP growth to Star Health's underwriting turnaround to ICICI Lombard's 54% retail health expansion — a trend directly tied to September 2025's GST exemption and one likely to keep outpacing the broader market through FY27.
The bigger takeaway for anyone using this data, though, is methodological: only companies with public listings or voluntary investor disclosures — roughly 15 of India's ~57 IRDAI-registered insurers — publish verifiable quarterly AUM, revenue, and growth figures. Every number in this report traces back to a company investor presentation, an exchange filing, or an audited results release, and every source is linked below.
For the other 40-odd insurers that operate in India, treat any "top 50 AUM" claim you encounter elsewhere with real skepticism unless it links back to the same kind of primary source — annual IRDAI gross premium data is real and useful, but it is not AUM, and conflating the two is where most bad insurance-sector reporting goes wrong.