Highlights:

The company continues to maintain a consistent growth trajectory, growing by 22% in terms of APE in Q1FY23, helping to maintain market leadership as a top 3 life insurer across individual and group business.

The product mix remains balanced, with non-par savings at 35%, participating products at 30%, ULIPs at 25%, individual protection at 5% and annuity at 6%, based on individual APE.

The protection share based on APE improved from 15.7% last year to 16.9% during Q1 FY23.

The credit protect business has registered strong growth of 96%, on the back of rise in disbursements across most of partners.

The company continues to look at overall protection growth across individual and group platforms in an agnostic manner.

On the retirement front, annuity business has grown by 10% on received premium basis, compared to a 9% de-growth for the industry in the quarter. On APE basis, annuity business has grown by 39%.

The regular premium variant of recently launched annuity product - Systematic Retirement Plan has been well received across channels. The company has also launched a new product Systematic Pension Plan, which is a participating pension plan. This product adds to the existing suite of pension products being offered to customers.

The company is witnessing healthy growth in business from new banca partners.

The company is also taking various imitative to improve direct sourcing.

Renewal premiums have grown by 19%, supported by improving persistency. 13th and 61st month persistency for limited and regular pay policies, is at 88% and 54% against 86% and 51% in first quarter of previous year.

New business margin have improved to 26.8% in Q1FY2023 up from 26.2% in Q1FY2022, on the back of profitable product mix and growth in protection business. The expenses had impact of 0.6% on margins. However, the company expects margins improvement trend to continue.

The company has completed raising sub-debt worth Rs 350 crore during this quarter.

Post the dividend payout of Rs 1.70 per share, the solvency stands at 178%.

In order to further strengthen solvency to fuel growth, the company would continue to evaluate raising equity capital as needed.

As per the company, the solvency ratio is comfortable and its not a hindrance for growth. The company would be maintaining solvency ratio in the range of 180-200%.

HDFC International, overseas subsidiary, has received an in-principle approval from International Financial Services Centres Authority - IFSCA to setup a global in-house center at GIFT City. This entity will pool and optimize all processing activities of international business. This is an important step towards eventually setting up an IFSC Insurance Office (IIO) at GIFT city, which can cater to the overseas insurance needs of the Indian diaspora.

Exide Life witnessed strong growth of 34% based on Individual WRP in Q1FY2023 and continues to enjoy a healthy product mix and growth across channels.

The integration of Exide Life is on track. The company has received the initial NCLT approval for triggering the merger process, including intimations to various regulatory authorities and related NOCs.

Subsequent to receipt of the NOCs from various regulatory authorities, the company expects to receive the final NCLT approval. The final nod from IRDAI is expected in H2FY2023 to be able to merge the subsidiary.

The company is in regular dialogue with IRDAI and working on charting a roadmap to deepen life insurance penetration in India.

The pension subsidiary, HDFC Pension, crossed the Rs 30000 crore AUM mark and has almost doubled its AUM in just 15 months. HDFC Pension had a market share of 38% end June 2022, maintaining its leadership position as private Pension Fund Manager (PFM) in terms of NPS AUM.

HDFC Bank has indicated about retaining promoter position in the company subject to regulatory approval. The company looks to further strengthening relations with HDFC Bank.