Of winners and walkaways: Insurers roll the dice on SBI, Eternal, and One97

Front-runners lock in ₹2,000 crore while weaker holdings fold early

Domestic insurance companies added SBI, Eternal, and One97 Communications to their portfolios in July, committing nearly ₹2,000 crore across the three firms. At the same time, they trimmed holdings in Coforge, Mankind Pharma, and L&T Finance Holdings, withdrawing over ₹1,600 crore, according to a Nuvama Alternative & Quantitative Research report analysing portfolio disclosures of four leading private insurers — HDFC Life, ICICI Prudential Life, Kotak Mahindra Life, and Tata AIA Life.

 

Several top buys coincided with large share sales during the month. SBI, for instance, raised ₹15,000 crore via a qualified institutional placement, while Invesco exited a 1 per cent stake in Lodha Developers through a block deal. Recently listed companies — Travel Food Services and Anthem Biosciences — also made their way into insurance portfolios.

 

Conversely, insurers fully exited positions in Techno Electric & Engineering Company, Finolex Industries, Canara Bank, Varroc Engineering, and CreditAccess Grameen.

 

Currently, the top three holdings across insurance portfolios remain HDFC Bank, Reliance Industries, and ICICI Bank. In the midcap segment, insurers favour BSE, Coforge, and Federal Bank, while in smallcaps, they lean towards Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences, Honasa Consumer, and City Union Bank, Nuvama’s analysis showed.