Blog · 6 Jul 2026
IRDAI Life Insurance Persistency Ratio Explained (10-Year Trends): Which Insurers Retain Policyholders Better?
When we buy a life insurance policy, most of us start by comparing companies on their Claim Settlement Ratio.
When we buy a life insurance policy, most of us start by comparing companies on their Claim Settlement Ratio.
Some of us also look at premium rates, bonuses, or how strong the brand feels. But there’s one more metric that rarely gets discussed, the life insurance persistency ratio. This ratio, published every year by IRDAI, shows how consistently policyholders keep paying their premiums after the first year. It shouldn’t be judged in isolation, but it does offer useful clues about how well an insurer retains customers over the long term.
In this article, I look at 10 years of official IRDAI persistency data (FY2015-16 to FY2024-25) to see how India’s leading life insurers have performed over time, and what you, as a prospective policyholder, can learn from those trends. What is the Life Insurance Persistency Ratio? The life insurance persistency ratio tells you what percentage of policyholders keep paying their renewal premiums after buying a policy.