ICICI Pru Life net profit jumps over 2 fold to Rs 185 cr in March quarter

ICICI Prudential Life Insurance on Saturday posted over two-fold jump in its net profit to Rs 185 crore for the January-March quarter on account of robust growth in new business.

The company had posted a profit after tax of Rs 64 crore for January-March FY2021, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance said in a regulatory filing.

For the full year 2021-22, the company's net profit declined to Rs 754 crore from Rs 960 crore for the year ended in March 2021, it said.

Value of new business (VNB) for FY2022 was Rs 2,163 crore, a growth of 33.4 per cent over FY2021.

This was led by a robust growth of 25 per cent in new business sum assured and 20 per cent in Annualised Premium Equivalent for the same period, the company said.

VNB is used to measure profitability of the new business written in a period. It is present value of all future profits to shareholders at the time of writing of the new business contract. It is also referred to a new business profit (NBP).

The company has a well-diversified product mix with linked savings at 48 per cent, traditional savings at 31 per cent, protection at 17 per cent and the balance of 4 per cent accounted for by group savings products, it said.

The board has approved a final dividend of Rs 0.55 per equity share for FY2022, said the insurer.

The company's 13th month persistency ratio improved to 85.7 per cent for FY2022, up from 84.8 per cent for FY2021, indicative of the quality of business being underwritten, it added.

Despite concerns and challenges posed by the onset of the Omicron variant, company's robust technology backbone has enabled continuity in operations, be it onboarding new customers or delivering superior service.

N S Kannan, MD & CEO, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance said, "Despite the disruptions caused by the third wave of Covid-19, which impacted productivity in January and February, we were able to demonstrate resilience in our operations. In March, we posted the best ever monthly sales by the company in any year since inception. This helped grow our VNB by 33 per cent year-on-year to Rs 2,163 crore for FY2022 with a robust VNB margin of 28 per cent."

Further, the insurer said that the strong performance was driven in equal measure by over 100 valuable partnerships forged during the year. In the agency channel, it added almost 25,000 agents through the year.

"This enabled us to support our strategy of deepening and widening distribution.