Page 5 - Insurance Stocks

Insurance stocks become fund managers' favourites

Insurance companies stocks are emerging as one of the favorites for domestic mutual fund managers. Until last year, the insurance sector had little or no representation in the stock market. However, a slew of big-ticket listings have caught the fancy of money managers, who are constantly on the lookout to expand their stock universe thanks to the gush of inflows.This can be gauged from the fact that three insurers - ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company, ICICI Lombard General Insurance and SBI Life Insurance - put together have consumed over Rs 6,000 crore of mutual fund equity assets. Further, HDFC Standard Life Insurance, which listed last week, saw investments from ICICI Prudential AMC, Reliance Nippon MF, Sundaram MF and Axis MF, among others.Not just the IPO, but mutual funds have been seeing lapping up shares of these companies from the secondary market as well. For instance, in October, equity MFs over Rs 1,000 crore in ICICI Lombard and SBI Life.Mahesh Patil, co-chief ...