Like many other twenty-somethings in India, Beverly Coutinho kept postponing buying a life insurance policy, until a surge in Covid-19 cases and deaths made her confront her own mortality.

"I saw people my own age dying, which prompted me to get life insurance immediately," says Coutinho, a 24-year-old senior executive at a public relations agency in Mumbai.

When a devastating second wave of the pandemic peaked in India during April and May, the numbers of people aged between 25 and 35 buying term insurance was 30 per cent higher than in the previous three months combined, said PolicyBazaar, India's largest online insurance aggregator.

"The current pandemic has led to higher awareness around the need for financial protection and the inadequacy of the current insurance coverage," Niraj Shah, chief financial officer of HDFC Life Insurance, said.

Read the full story at Reuters here.