Highlights:

The company is witnessing a lift in customer confidence, which is also reflected in the new business premium trends for both the individual as well as the group credit protect business.

It continues to see a pickup in the savings business on a sequential basis on account of increase in both the average ticket size as well as number of policies.

The company has recorded a growth of 8% in terms of Individual WRP during 9MFY21 on a base of 31% growth last year.

The performance of the company compares well against the private industry, which de]grew by 6% on a base of 16% growth in 9M last year.

The company has sold about 6.8 lakh policies registering a growth of 6%.

The market share in terms of Individual WRP has increased by 214 bps from 14.3% in 9MFY20 to 16.4% in 9MFY21. The market share for the group new business segments amongst the private sector players is at 27.3% and overall new business is at 22.3%.

New business margins have seen an improvement on the back of return to growth, favourable product mix and costs being kept under control. The NBM for 9MFY21 stands at 25.6%.

The company has settled 1271 individual and 542 group Covid related claims as of December 2020. The frequency of claim intimations has been higher in Q3. Overall experience remains within estimates and the company continues to monitor the claims trends closely and will keep reevaluating the adequacy of the Covid reserve through the course of the next quarter.

Product mix remains balanced with ULIPs at 23%, nonpar savings at 30% and par at 35%.

The company continues to see growth momentum in Individual Protection APE reverting to normal levels. The company is confident of growth in the protection on the back of under penetration and rising awareness.

Individual and group annuity business saw strong growth in 42% with annuities contributing over 5% of individual APE.

Renewal growth has remained strong at 22% (87% done through digital) with normalization being witnessed in premium collection rates. However, the company continues to monitor collections closely and remain watchful about emerging persistency trends.

This quarter, new business margins have seen an improvement on sequential as well as year-on-year basis on the back of return to growth, favorable product mix and costs being kept under control. New business margin stands at 25.6% for 9MFY21 with the value of new business at Rs 1408 crore.

The company continues to see strong growth in the bancassurance which have grown at 20%. Within bancassurance, growth at HDFC Bank continues to trend well. Agency channel saw a pickup this quarter. The company is also actively collaborating with new Bancassurance partners like Yes Bank and SBI Capital Markets on new business.

The credit protect has now reached 95% of previous year volume.

On non PAR persistency, 13th month persistency is above 90% and has very low surrender.

The ULIP persistency is showing strength and the company has a positive operating variance on persistency.

On product performance, the company remains focused on driving a balanced product mix and diversification of sourcing channel partners.

The company expects growing protection business by 100 bps per year as reasonable. Savings will also continue to grow and annuity is likely to be a bigger piece in savings. The company wants to grow its retirement corpus 3x by 2025.