There is huge potential for insurance business in the Indian rural market; the only need is to convince and persuade the target population by designing insurance policies as per the need and requirement of the customer. Efforts are required to make insurance policies more customized and personalized in order to win new customers and to retain the old ones. The days are not so far-off when insurance in the Indian rural market will be bought and not sold by the insurance players.

Indian insurance market can be broadly divided into urban and rural markets. These two segments are diverse in nature and have distinguished characteristics. The economic growth of the two has not been the same. A wide disparity exists between the per capital income and literacy rate, among other things, in these two sectors. From life insurance perspective, statistics show that rural population has lower reach in comparison to the urban market. Most of the new insurance companies started operating from metros and urban areas. As a result, the urban population got more attention which led to more market penetration in the urban than in the rural parts of the country. The urban segment in India is small as compared to the rural segment. Hence, exploring the rural markets poses to be a Herculean task to the insurers. The situation of rural market is different from the urban one. A majority of them are left uncovered although they are also exposed to risks similar to or even higher than that of their urban counterparts. The ratio of rural Indian population is very high and it has growing insurance needs; therefore, it is a fact that the potential growth of insurance industry lies in the rural market, both for life and general (non life) insurance. A lot of study and research was and is being carried out in this direction to develop new strategies to explore the untapped area in Indian insurance market.

Opportunities and threats go hand in hand in every industry and insurance industry is no exception. Identification of opportunities and threats help in better analysis of the market. An attempt is made to examine the opportunities and threats related to rural insurance markets and how insurers can get the most out of them.

Marketing Mastermind Magazine, Rural Insurance, Insurance Business, Indian Rural Market, Insurance Policies, Indian Insurance Market, Urban Market, Insurance Industry, Insurance Products, Insurance Regulatory Development Authority, IRDA, Rural Social Sectors, Non Governmental Organizations, Self-Help Groups, Group Insurance Schemes, Innovative Marketing Strategies.