ICICI Lombard General Insurance on Tuesday reported a 11% year-on-year rise in its net profit to Rs 352.53 crore for the third quarter of the current financial year, backed by a 17% y-o-y growth in gross premiums underwritten. The net profit for the third quarter last fiscal had stood at Rs 317.53 crore. During Q3FY23, the combined ratio stood at 104.4%, against 104.5% in the year-ago period, according to an exchange filing.
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During the period under review, its gross direct premium income (GDPI) was Rs 5,493 crore, against Rs 4,699 crore in Q3FY22, a growth of 16.9% as against the industry growth of 18.1%. “Excluding crop, GDPI growth of the company was at 17.1%, which was higher than the industry growth of 16.6% in Q3FY23,” ICICI Lombard said.
For the nine months ended on December 31, GDPI of the insurer increased to Rs 16,048 crore, compared with Rs 13,311 crore in the same period a year ago, posting a growth of 20.6%, which was higher than the industry growth of 16.2%. “If you look at the nine months business for our company, including every line of business, we are outgrowing the industry by a reasonable margin,” MD & CEO Bhargav Dasgupta said after declaring the results.
“Very recently we launched 14 products in one shot,” Dasgupta said.
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On the proposed composite licences, he said, “Different entities and different groups will look at it differently. If you study the composite licence model which is prevalent in Europe, different groups have followed different approaches in terms of running one entity or sister organizations. So, as an organisation, we see it definitely as an opportunity. We will have to see how we will be leveraging the opportunity assuming that it would finally happens…”
On the exposure draft, issued by regulator Irdai, on expenses of management regulations, Dasgupta said, “This is as of now an exposure draft. We will have to await the final regulation to be notified. There is an expectation that this will happen this quarter, but you can never say for certain. Now if it happens, what the Irdai is very clearly keen on is to gradually reduce the overall expenses of management, and the aggregate number that the regulator talked about is slightly lower than the current blended expenses of management for the industry. So, we all will have to work within the limit and see how we can gradually reduce it.” “We would have to gradually bring down the expenses of management. We will have to look at the current business mix and what we will have to do in terms of staying within that limit. At least for us, ICICI Lombard, we are already complying with the objective that the authority has set for the industry. From our perspective, we don’t see it as a challenge given where we are. We are anyway lower than that limit,” he pointed out.