78 per cent of Indians feel that Insurance is an extremely important part of overall financial planning, reveals SBI Life’s Financial Immunity Survey 2.0

Mumbai, January 12, 2022: SBI Life Insurance, one of the most trusted private life insurers in the country, unveiled yet another comprehensive consumer study, The Financial Immunity Survey 2.0, providing deep insights into consumer’s evolving behavior towards financial preparedness in the post covid world. SBI Life commissioned the survey with NielsenIQ (India), reaching out to 5,000 respondents across 28 key cities covering the length and breadth of India.
On the backdrop of the ongoing pandemic, a vast majority of Indians are confident that the country would tide over the situation or a possible 3rd wave. The confidence of being able to navigate through the situation is not surprising when 80% of the Indians strongly feel prepared towards physical immunity on account of taking either single or double dose of vaccination. But 38% of the Indians feel that the situation could worsen over the next three months and their top three worries attributed to (1) Rising medical/ treatment cost (2) Instability of Jobs (3) concerns around Health of family/self.
The survey findings further attempts to decode the behavior towards the top worries citied by consumers on the account of impact of income because of the pandemic where 79% of the Indians faced income reduction and 1/3rd are still facing reduced income. 64% of the Indians feel that their key life milestones like accumulating savings, leisure traveling, providing for child education were impacted.
With COVID-19 and uncertainty around, the importance of financial immunity has increased and 57% of the Indians relate it to being able to maintain ‘Financial Security and Stability of self/ family’.  78% of the Indians, feel that life insurance is extremely important in overall financial planning process. Realizing this importance of insurance, 46% purchased Health insurance and 44% purchased Life insurance for the first time during COVID-19. But although Indians feel insurance is important, they still seem to be under insured with as their insurance cover is ~3.8 times of their annual income which is not even close to recommended 10X or 25X of their annual income.
Speaking on the survey launch, Mr. M. Anand, President, Zone 1, SBI Life Insurance, said, “The pandemic has had a profound impact on consumer behaviour, the attitude of Indians towards financial immunity has seen a considerable positive shift. SBI Life’s Financial Immunity Survey 2.0 is yet another attempt to understand the evolving consumer behavior and their increasing affinity towards building a strong financial immunity. The primal concern after having witnessed the second wave of the pandemic is to be financially prepared and immune, to protect the financial future of loved ones and a majority of the Indians believe that insurance plays a key role in helping them tackle this concern.”
He further added, “At SBI Life, we understand the significance of securing lives and this consumer study gives us invaluable insights on how Indians think about physical as well as financial immunity on the backdrop of COVID 19.”