United India looks at listing

Sources say disinvestment would be somewhere below 10%

The United India Insurance Company is in the initial stage of initiating a public offer of Rs 1,500 crore. The decision is the first step in line with finance minister Arun Jaitley's announcement while presenting the Union Budget for 2016-17. The board has taken an in-principle decision to list the shares and it has to go through various processes, including fixing a valuation by an external agency and other procedures, said official sources.

It may be noted that the Union Finance Minister, in his budget presentation, said that the general insurance companies owned by the government will be listed in the stock exchanges.

The government has around 150 crore shares in the company. While what percent of the shares would be diluted is not known, chances are that the disinvestment would be somewhere below 10 per cent in the first year, said a source on condition of anonymity.

The company posted a drop of 26.33 per cent in net profit at Rs 221 crore for the year ended March 31, 2016 as compared to Rs 300 crore during the previous fiscal year, owing to the additional wages to the employees and the claims related to the Chennai floods occured during the beginning of December, 2015.

The company's premium grew to Rs 12,250 crore during the year 2015-16 from Rs 10692 crore during the previous fiscal year, with a growth of 14.58 per cent.

The company has the data of around two crore customers.

The senior officials from the company earlier said that it is expecting a premium of Rs 14,444 crore with over 17 per cent growth rate in the current fiscal. The Market value of the company's total investment portfolio at the end of year 2015-16 was Rs 24,021 crore and the Net worth of the company stood at Rs 5731 crore as on March 31, 2016, as against Rs 5589 crore at end of previous year.