An Investigation of the Awareness of the Life Insurance Among the Hawkers in Dhaka City: The Prospects of Microinsurance

Abstract

Insurance is one of the most important driving force of the economy which collects deposits from the people as a premium and assists to foster the economic prospects as well as provide financial security to the people who faces different uncertainty  to the personal life and to their property but it does not work as the risk elimination tool where it is not possible to eliminate all types of risks which force it to reduce certain risk especially risks related to the personal life providing certain insurance policy like life insurance where eliminate risks related to the property providing specific amount of money if the property damages by specified event included in the insurance contract which is the contract of utmost good faith. The sample size of this study was fifty (50) which focus on the Hawkers in Dhaka City that are randomly chosen with the objective of analyzing the awareness of the Hawkers towards the life insurance and to identify the prospects of Microinsurance among the Hawkers. Finding the current situation of the life insurance business as well as Microinsurance in Bangladesh and the current status of the Hawkers is also important objectives of this study.  This study focuses on the awareness of life insurance among the Hawkers in Dhaka City, where the prospects of the Micro Insurance are analyzed considering the characteristics of Micro Insurance as Hawkers do not have any idea about Micro Insurance and the acceptance of those characteristics were recorded and found that the Hawkers are very keen to uptake Micro Insurance because of its special characteristics. In this study it is also concluded that there is a positive correlation between the knowledge related issues like the knowledge about life insurance policy, knowledge about the financial benefit and financial security, as well as knowledge about the insurance products provided by different companies and awareness of life insurance among the Hawkers in Dhaka City. Finally, this study suggested that the managers and policy makers need to disburse information to increase the awareness and trust towards the life insurance in Bangladesh, especially in the very niche insurance market which is the Hawkers in Dhaka City.

Keywords: Insurance, Life Insurance, Microinsurance, Awareness, Prospects, knowledge, financial benefit, financial security, policy, policyholder.