HDFC Life Q1 profit rises 15% to Rs 415 crore

Mumbai: HDFC Life on Friday reported 15 per cent increase in net profit at Rs 415 crore for June quarter 2023-24, driven by all-round improvement in business as well as hefty capital gains from the market.

As against a net loss of Rs 7,000 crore from market investments in June 2022 quarter, the insurer booked Rs 6,600 crore in net income from the markets in the period under review, chief executive and managing director Vibha Padalkar told PTI.

Overall premium income growth was led by retail protection that jumped 45 per cent, boosting its overall growth in sum assured by 73 per cent to Rs 41,843 crore, and the growth in the number of lives covered by 34 per cent. All this helped it cross the AUM the Rs 2.5 lakh crore-mark, she said.

The company's value of new business, which is the value of the future profits of policies sold in the quarter, grew 18 per cent to Rs 610 crore, which Padalkar claimed is more than 1.5x the average industry growth in the quarter.

The company also declared its highest ever bonus of Rs 3,660 crore to over 23 lakh policyholders.

However, the new business margin trended down to 26.2 per cent in the quarter from 27.6 per cent a year ago and Padalkar attributed the fall to the merger of Exide Life in the second quarter of last fiscal.

The overall margin was impacted to the tune of 120 basis points, she said.

Total expenses to total premium ratio stood at 19.8 per cent , up from 14.8 per cent . The solvency ratio slipped to 200 from 203.

"We closed Q1 with a robust 12 per cent growth in individual premium income, which is 1.5x of private peers, despite coming off a strong March. Over the past four years, despite facing open architecture and intense competition from unlisted insurers, our market share has steadily increased from 12.5 per cent in FY19 to 16.5 per cent in FY23 and to 16.9 per cent in Q1," Padalkar said, adding its market share in terms of individual premium underwritten expanded to 10.6 per cent.

During the quarter, it onboarded more than 2 lakh retail customers, up 8 per cent, taking the overall lives covered to over 1.6 crore, up 34 per cent on-year.

Retail sum assured increased 55 per cent and the overall sum assured 73 per cent and the overall market share rose to 16.9 per cent. Retail protection trends remain encouraging with a growth of 45 per cent.

While the growth is accentuated by a favourable base, she believes that the pick-up in protection is sustainable and the growth is likely to be healthy for the year.

Individual premium rose 12 per cent to Rs 1,882 crore, taking the total annualized premium equivalent up 13 per cent to Rs 2,328 crore.

Of this, new business premium grew 19 per cent to Rs 5,869 crore and renewal premium jumped 14 per cent to Rs 5,804 crore, taking the total premium to Rs 11,673 crore, registering a growth of 16 per cent on-year and the assets under management to Rs 2.533 lakh crore.