HDFC Life Insurance Company India conducted a conference call on 21 July 2023 to discuss its financial results for the quarter ended June 2023. Vibha Padalkar, MD&CEO of the bank addressed the call:

Highlights:

The merger of HDFC limited with HDFC bank has been completed and now the company is subsidiary of HDFC Bank. HDFC Bank holds increased 50.4% shareholding in the HDFC Life.

The company is focusing on strengthening at partnership with HDFC Bank and maximizing customer engagement within the group.

The company has closed the quarter with a growth of 12% in individual WRP, which was 1.5x of private industry, despite coming off a strong March.

The product mix of the company has remains balanced in Q1FY2024.

Over the last 4 years, despite facing open architecture and intense competition from unlisted insurers, our market share has steadily increased from 12.5% in FY19 to 16.5% in FY23 in the private sector and 7.2% to 10.8% at an overall industry level.

The company has covered more than 2 lakh lives in retail policies and 1.6 crore lives overall in Q1FY24, a growth of 8% and 34% respectively, over Q1FY23.

Retail sum assured recorded an increase of 55% and overall sum assured 73%, and overall market share in Q1FY24 was 16.9%.

Retail protection trends remain encouraging with YoY growth of 45% in Q1FY24. While the growth is accentuated by a favourable base, the company expects the pickup in protection is sustainable and the growth is likely to be healthy for the year.

The company remains optimistic about growth opportunities in the life insurance sector.

The company expects the growth to accelerate in the rest of the year with Q2FY2024 growth higher than Q1FY2024 and H2FY2024 growth higher than H1FY2024 after adjusting for one time excess demand in March 2023

And incremental business in the March 2023 was estimated to be around Rs 1000 crore due to change in tax rules.

The new business margins on merger entity basis were 26.2% in Q1FY2024 up from 25.1% in Q1FY2023. The company expects full year margins for FY2024 to be similar to FY2023 margins of 27.4%.

The company has exhibited healthy improvement in persistency in all cohorts and geographies.

The company has added 15000 agents during Q1FY2024.

All large bank partnerships are doing well the banca channel has recorded strong 25% growth.

The company has witnessed 50-100bps improvement in the HDFC Bank share in banca channel.

The growth in the tier 2 and 3 location of the company is getting enhanced post the acquisition of Exide Life.