With the opening up of the insurance sector, a number of players such as Bajaj life, Birla Sunlife, ICICI Prudential, HDFC Standard life, ING Vysya life, MetLife India, SBI life etc. entered into the market. The new players with their focused approach and need based selling captured significant chunk of the insurance market. In other words, after the liberalization of insurance sector, the performance of the LIC has undergone ups and downs. In view of the above changes in the insurance sector, an attempt has been made to assess the Business Performance of the LIC and Private Sector Insurance Companies in terms of number of polices issued and premium income. The secondary data are collected for a period of 11 years from 2000-2001 to 2010-11. The relevant data are collected from the annual reports, booklets and supplements published by the IRDA from time to time. Key words: Insurance, LIC, Market Share, Premium, Policies, Private Sector, public Sector etc.