KARACHI: Pakistan plans to increase insurance coverage period along with financial benefits for its overseas nationals and add organ insurance to its product list, officials said on Thursday.
State Life Insurance Company, the only state-owned entity in the life insurance business, currently covers over half a million Pakistani workers, mostly in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other gulf countries.
Officials are now planning to enhance the coverage of overseas Pakistani workers through the Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment.
“We have presented a proposal to the government by working with the Bureau of Emigration to provide maximum monetary benefits to our laborers,” Shoaib Javed Hussain, the company’s chairman, said while briefing members of the Council of Economic and Energy Journalists on Thursday.
“The major insurance usage comes from our labor force based in the UAE and other gulf countries,” he said, adding: “On the whole, about 130 million lives of Pakistanis are covered by the company.”

Hussain informed the insurance coverage was currently provided for five years which was proposed to be increased to 10 years while exceeding monetary benefits to two million rupees.
“Currently, Pakistani workers pay a premium of Rs2,500,” Dr. Mushtaq Ahmed Memon, who works with the company as divisional head (group and pension), told Arab News. “We provide the Rs1 million insurance coverage against that amount in case of loss of life or limb.”
“We have proposed to increase the coverage to 10 years and financial benefits to Rs2 million so that overseas Pakistanis can get maximum benefit,” he added.
The company officials said they had also planned to provide insurance coverage to Pakistani workers who suffer organ damages abroad and are eventually repatriated.
“We are going to add organ insurance to our list,” Memon said. “When Pakistanis move abroad, their work environment changes. We frequently hear from them instances of kidney and liver failures. Many of them come back after losing their jobs in such instances. In this case, we have proposed to compensate them with Rs500,000 against a payment of only Rs300.”
Life insurance penetration is only 0.6 percent of Pakistan’s gross domestic product with a total market size of about Rs243 billion as of 2020. About nine organizations are operating in life insurance in Pakistan, but the state-owned company has the major market share of 54 percent.
The company officials said their net income had increased by more than 34 percent to Rs160 billion after its assets posted a growth of about 14 percent to Rs1.36 trillion.
“The company has paid Rs103.25 billion in claim payments to policy holders which is 60 percent more than the previous year,” its chairman told journalists, adding: “Social protection rather than profit maximization is the core purpose of the company.”
He said that state life was in process of launching health insurance in the country which would be cost effective and provide extensive coverage.