ISSUE DATE: March 22, 2021 UPDATED: March 15, 2021 12:48 IST Illustration by Nilanjan Das Its acronym, LIC, and its logo have been iconic symbols of financial security for Indians born before the new millennium. Even now, 290 million, or one in five, Indians are insured by the government-owned Life Insurance Corporation. It still controls 66 per cent of the country’s life insurance market even though private insurers, allowed into the fray in 1999, have now been around for over two decades. LIC is a financial behemoth like no other in the country, overshadowing even the State Bank of India (SBI). It has 4,955 offices across the country, many of them occupying prime real estate. It directly employs 108,000 people, besides 1.3 million agents across the country, and has assets under management ofRs 36 lakh crore, making it a megacorp three times the size of Reliance Industries, India’s largest private sector company.