ICICI Prudential Life Q2 net profit marginally up at Rs 303 crore

ICICI Prudential Life Insurance on Tuesday reported a marginal rise in net profit at Rs 303 crore for September quarter of the current fiscal year.

The life insurer had posted a net profit of Rs 302 crore during a similar period a year ago.

Total income jumped to Rs 16,835.36 crore during July-September 2020-21 as against Rs 8,209.08 crore in the year-ago period, it said in a regulatory filing.

Company’s net premium income grew 6.2 per cent to Rs 8,572 crore as against Rs 8,065 crore. New business premium rose 1.1 per cent to Rs 2,957 crore during the quarter under review.

ICICI Prudential said the recovery in new business premium helped it offset some of the decline seen in June quarter due to the impact of the pandemic.

Retail renewal premium was up 6.3 per cent to Rs 5,473 crore from Rs 5,150 crore.

Value to new business (VNB)– a measure of the profitability of the new business in a period —was up 0.3 per cent to Rs 401 crore as against Rs 400 crore in the year-ago period.

VNB is the present value of all future profits to shareholders measured at the time of writing of the new business contract.

“We had a strong VNB performance for the quarter with the margin improving from 21.1 per cent for Q2-FY2020 to 27.4 per cent for Q2-FY2021. This was supported by a market-leading protection performance, with the protection mix for H1-FY2021 at 19.5 per cent compared to 14.8 per cent for H1-FY2020,” MD & CEO N S Kannan said.

Kannan said with the economy gradually opening up post lockdown, the insurer is starting to see positive trends.

“On the back of risk-averse behaviour of customers, we saw considerable interest in traditional long-term savings products which grew 45 per cent year-on-year for the quarter. Annuity products too registered a robust growth of 73 per cent year-on-year for the quarter. The unit-linked business has shown a strong sequential improvement with Q2-FY2021 nearly doubling over Q1-FY2021,” he added.

The solvency ratio was 205 per cent as on September 30, well above the regulatory requirement of 150 per cent. Assets under management stood at Rs 1,81,492 crore at the end of the second quarter, showing a growth of 18.6 per cent over March 31, 2020, it said.

ICICI Prudential Life stock settled at Rs 412.45 on BSE, up 1.90 per cent from the previous close.