ICICI Prudential Life Insurance on Tuesday reported a 47.33% year-on-year jump in its net profit to Rs 445.62 crore in the second quarter of the current financial year on a consolidated basis from `302.46 crore in the same period last fiscal.

Growth in profit for the second quarter was primarily aided by over 33% y-o-y rise in the company’s first year premium to Rs 1557.24 crore. Its renewal premium during the period, however, declined by 3.5% YoY to Rs 5570.35 crore.

The private sector life insurer had reported a net loss of Rs 185.29 crore in the first quarter of this fiscal year as it had total claims of Rs 1,119 crore on account of Covid-19. The claims net of reinsurance was Rs 500 crore in Q1FY22.

The company on Tuesday said for the first half of FY22 its Covid-19 claims net of reinsurance stood at Rs 862 crore. Provisions of Rs 412 crore was maintained for future Covid-19 claims, including IBNR (incurred but not reported) provision.

Its value of new business (VNB) for H1FY22 was Rs 873 crore — growth of 45% over H1FY21. With an annualised premium equivalent (APE) of Rs 3196 crore for the H1FY22, VNB margin was 27.3% for H1FY22 as compared to 25.1% for FY21.

N S Kannan, MD & CEO, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, said, “The improvement in the pandemic situation with each passing month increased consumer awareness on the need for life insurance and our suite of customer-centric products has enabled us to grow new business by 62% sequentially this quarter. Significantly, we posted our best ever September on monthly sales for any year since inception, aided by our well-diversified product and distribution channel mix.”

Kannan said new business sum assured grew 35% year on year to Rs 3.37 trillion in H1FY22 and the company continued to be the private sector leader with an overall market share of 13.2%.

The company’s 13th month persistency ratio improved to 85.1% in H1FY22, up from 82.1% for the same period last fiscal, indicative of the quality of business being underwritten. Its solvency ratio stood at 199.9% on September 30, 2021.

On Tuesday, ICICI Prudential Life’s scrip fell 1.95% to end the day at Rs 660.15 on the Bombay Stock Exchange. The company reported its Q2 results after stock market trading hours.