Note: This is a preliminary transcript and may contain inaccuracies. It will be updated with a final, fully-reviewed version soon.
Niva Bupa Health Insurance Company Ltd (NSE: NIVABUPA) Q4 2026 Earnings Call dated May. 08, 2026
Corporate Participants:
Krishnan Ramachandran — Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director
Vishwanath Mahendra — Executive Director & Chief Financial Officer
Ankur Kharbanda — Executive Director & Chief Business Officer
Analysts:
Rashad Kapadia — Analyst
Sanketh Godha — Analyst
Supratim Datta — Analyst
Prayesh Jain — Analyst
Hitendra Pradhan — Analyst
Shobhit Sharma — Analyst
Unidentified Participant
Presentation:
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Neva Bhopa Health Insurance Co. Ltd. Q4 and FY26 earnings conference call hosted by ICICI Securities. Please note that any statements and comments made in today’s call that may look like forward looking statements are based on the information presently available to the management and do not constitute any indication of any future performance as future performance involves risks and uncertainties which could cause results to differ materially from the current view being expressed.
As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen only mode and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing Star then zero on a touch tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Rashad Kapadia from ICICI Securities. Thank you. And over to you sir.
Rashad Kapadia — Analyst
Thank you. Good evening ladies and gentlemen. It is a privilege to host the management team of leaveawupa Health Insurance Co. Ltd. For their Q4FY26 results conference call. We have from the management Mr. Krishnan Ramachandran MD and CEO Mr. Viswanath Mahendra ED. And CFO Mr. Ankur Kharbanda ED and Chief Business Officer Mr. Babatosh Mishra, Chief Operating Officer and Mr. Vikas Jain, Chief Investment Officer. So without further ado, I would now like to hand over the call to Mr. Krishnan Ramachandran.
Thank you. And over to you sir.
Krishnan Ramachandran — Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director
Thank you. And thank you to all of you who have gathered this evening, Friday evening to be with us. Much appreciated. I’ll divide my update into two parts. The first is some perspectives on what’s going on in the industry. And the second of course is Neera Bupa. As far as the industry is concerned, there are a number of ongoing positive developments. The awareness campaign Achakhiya Insurance LIA in Q4 as well, the GI industry led by health executed on an awareness campaign which is now an awarded campaign.
And all of the KPIs for the campaign in terms of specifically around reach and awareness are certainly very encouraging. And this is a campaign as you all know, that we will continue. It’s a multi year campaign. The second update is GST continues to be a positive. Continues to be a positive. A tailwind for the industry indeed. Now with the benefit of the entire H2 behind us, the retail health growth, if you looked at Health H2 for the industry was about 30%. And with Neva Bhoopa, our retail health growth for the same period was in excess of 40%.
So continued strong volume and growth on the back of what has been a transformational policy reform, the industry initiatives around hospitals, collaboration around healthcare continue apace. The Common Empowerment Initiative has now reached 2,500 hospitals where the MOU has either been signed or is ready to be signed. The last time we spoke I mentioned that standard treatment protocols for eight infections sorry, seven infections are live work is at a very advanced stage in terms of adding guidelines for modern cancer treatments as well as robotic surgeries and going live with the standard treatment workflows.
And there’s 144 of them. All of these initiatives help bring about higher transparency and standardization of care of care pathways and claims cost is embedded in these care pathways. So I think these are great initiatives to bring about transparency and improve affordability as far as health insurance is concerned. The other big recent positive development which happened in Q4 is the notification of the Indash standard or the IFRS 17 global standard which is now effective April 2026. You know, as Neva UPA, we’ve always been reporting or leading with the IFRS accounts and this is something that we will be going live with starting this quarter itself.
And we do view this as an extremely positive development in terms of bringing about transparency as well as standardization in terms of how accounting is looked at within the insurance industry. Coming on to Niva Bhupa, when I look back at the financial year we closed at a strong 27.4% overall growth rate for a GWP of 9433 crores and I still continue to talk about these numbers on
Sanketh Godha — Analyst
An
Krishnan Ramachandran — Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director
End basis. So in a similar vein, retail growth was 35% for the full year. Our profit after tax on an Indus basis was 366crores on a full year basis up from 203crores last the prior financial year and our return on net worth crossed double digit for a 10.7% ROE number. Our market share on retail health closed at 10.1% on a full year basis up from 9.4%. And in Q4 specifically we moved our market share to 10.4% up from 9%. On talent, we continue our journey of emphasizing and placing a lot of importance in all of the talent management processes and once more we were recertified as a great place to work.
We continue to figure in the top 25 in banking and financial services. While we still don’t know our rank, but we certainly figure in the top 100 of all companies of all sizes in India on Customer A few KPIs that we monitor specifically NPS across more than 25 pivotal customer facing touch points. On a weighted average basis this number moved up to 60 up from 55 the prior year. We continued to hold strong on claim settlement at 94% plus on a full year basis and our journey on analytics, generative AI and technology across the entire value chain continues and we have more than 30 pilots or projects underway across the entire value chain using some of these modern modern technologies.
Two other customer centric as well as health cost management measures. One is our Preferred Provider Network which is now present in 49 cities. More than 1,000 hospitals and 20% of claims in these cities go through these hospitals and we continue to be a strong health partner of choice for an increasingly large number of Indians as evidenced by the increased utilization metrics on our customer app whether it’s doctor consults, health checkups or any of the new services that we have launched in the last financial year.
With that I’m going to hand over to Vishnath for an update on our financial performance.
Vishwanath Mahendra — Executive Director & Chief Financial Officer
Thank you sir and good evening everyone. So like Mr. Kirshan mentioned, our profit for the year grew by 80%. The same number for the quarter four is 90%. So 90% increase over last year. Q4 the combined ratio for FY26 under IFRS has improved by 160 basis point to 101.4%. While there is increase in overall loss ratio by 1.1% primarily due to mix change. This has been more than offset by reduction in expense ratio by 2.7% resulting in improvement in combined ratio. The expense of management ratio for FY26 improved to 33.7% from 39.2% last year.
This improvement is primarily driven by operating leverage and economies of scale. The allowable EOM including additional allowance comes to around 36%. So we have comfortably complied with regulatory prescribed EOM limit. Analyzed investment yield for FY26 is 7.2% with AUM of 9,670 crore. Solvency ratio is at healthy level of 2.49 as on 31st March 2026. So these were the financial highlights for FY26. We are open to question.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you very much sir. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press STAR and one on the Touchstone telephone. If you wish to withdraw yourself from the question queue you may press star and 2. Participants are requested to use handset while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait For a moment while the question queue assembles. First question is from the line of Supratheem Dutta from Japanese. Please go ahead.
Supratim Datta
Thanks a lot for the opportunity. I have three questions starting with the growth rate. You know, again, you know, this has been a very strong year like you articulated at the start. Now thinking of, you know, the next two to three years, assuming that you know, you go at somewhere around that 25% level, you know, which you have tried to meet and you know, successfully done over the past few years, assuming that you go at 25%, you will get to somewhere around the 15, 16,000 crore GWP. Now that I wanted to understand, what would you know, what would you require to go from, you know, current 9,000 to that, you know, 15, 16,000 for GWP?
What would be the building blocks here? If you could get some color around that. Secondly, when you reach this scale, what kind of operating expense ratios can you operate at? An IFRS level Because your IFRS expense ratio has come down significantly since FY23. Wanted to understand what would be the steady state ratio here. That’s the second. And lastly there has been a lot of discussion around commission and commission regulations. Obviously everything is speculation. Wanted to understand if there are, you know, caps or an absolute reduction in commission, how would you go about mitigating the impact?
Would you pass it on to distributors or you know, how would you go about, you know, addressing that situation? Yeah, those are my three questions. Thank you.
Krishnan Ramachandran
Thank you. Subakin. In terms of building blocks, look, there is going to be continuity in terms of what’s historically been the levers for our growth. One of our sources of strength we feel as a management team and it’s a strategic choice is our multi channel distribution architecture. Last year, as you would have seen, we’ve considerably increased our distribution spread. NET Addition of 58,000 agents, addition of 50 plus brokers, I think 23 additional financial institutions that are now part of our distribution strength.
So certainly one part of the growth is going to continue or a major part of the growth is going to continue to come from the distribution that we already have and we will continue to invest and grow that distribution. Now layer onto that, this distribution we will use to tap newer and newer customer segments. For example, we now have a product portfolio that covers practically every income segment except poor or near poor people across the country. So using the same distribution to tap into more and more customer segments is a layer that will add, that is a building block, if you will, on top of the distribution.
So
Sanketh Godha
Products for segments is definitely a
Krishnan Ramachandran
Building block that will add on top of the distribution. The third one I would add is our strategy on Bharat. Through our own virtual agency as well as our bank distribution, we have access to every pin code in the country. And one of the distribution strategies that we have been doubling down on for the last two years is our Bharat strategy which takes us into tier three cities and below. We have doubled down in a couple of geographies last year. That’s given us success. And the idea this year is to expand to more geographies so broadly.
And of course we will continue to experiment with new distribution archetypes or models. But given what we know and you know, of course there is a continued inflection towards digital channels. We’ve seen significantly faster rates of growth in our own digital channels, whether it’s our own or through third parties. So I’d say that’s where that’s been our source of growth. We continue to believe that will be the source of growth or the building blocks as you refer to it us. And of course we will continue to pilot and experiment on variants or new models within this.
Bharat is one example. But there are many other examples across and within channels that we will test pilot and scale as we see success. So that’s the first part of your question in terms of where will the growth come from on the IFRS part. I’m going to request Vishwanath and then I’ll come back along with Ankur on the commission part.
Vishwanath Mahendra
Yeah. So Prathim, in case of our long term view on these ratios, so what we can share with you is combined operating ratio or in case of IFS CISR, our model says it should be let’s say 99% or so in FY29. Now the breakup of this in loss ratio and expense ratio, it may vary of course depending on what is the channel mix, product mix, etc. But broadly to indicate the loss ratio may remain stable or may inch up by 150 basis point. And entirely the same will come from expense ratio. And that 99% combined ratio will translate to mid to high teens roe which is close to 11% currently
Krishnan Ramachandran
And on commission. You know Supathim, to your point, you know we await guidance from the authority in terms of how they would like to move forward. But our belief is that the single limit on expense of management has been an important and transformational change in the insurance industry. It’s in line with what happened in the asset management industry where they have a total expense ratio and they manage Costs, including acquisition costs within that. So our belief and prayers to the authority continues to be around keeping a single limit of expensive management and maybe a glide path to lower that.
That is our belief. But look, I think what we have seen with the GST experience is that lower price, our affordability does translate into volume and value growth and more robust production for customers. So we are confident that whatever the authority comes up with will make sure that the distribution is appropriately remunerated for the efforts that they make. And net, net it will translate into, you know, continued strong momentum. You know, if the answer is it makes the product more affordable, you know, we have clearly seen that volume growth more than compensates for, you know, for other aspects.
Supratim Datta
Thanks a lot for that. Just one last question on the EUM road. It seems to have slowed down in FY26 versus the kind of growth that we have seen in the last two years. Wanted to understand is there anything that needs to be taken into consideration when we are looking at EUM growth for the upcoming years?
Vishwanath Mahendra
Not really. It has to do with the raise of capital. So that’s all. Otherwise in terms of business, if you keep that aside, it is study group.
Supratim Datta
Okay, thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Praise Jain from Motilal Oswald Financial Services. Please proceed.
Prayesh Jain
Yeah, hi. Congratulations on a great set of numbers. First question is just on the numbers front there’s some reversal of expense. Could you explain that on the shareholders account
Vishwanath Mahendra
Which one you are referring to? Place? You are referring to ifrs,
Prayesh Jain
Gap, Indian Gap.
Vishwanath Mahendra
Indian Gap. And you are referring to which statements?
Prayesh Jain
Shareholders account.
Vishwanath Mahendra
Oh, okay. You have. Okay, understood. So what happened? Till 31st December we were slightly more than allowed yarn. So we transferred from policyholder to shareholder account. Now for the whole year we met that, you know, em limit. So now that was reversed. So now for the whole year there is no movement from policyholder to shareholder. And that’s why that December number has been, you know, reversed. That’s all. But this is optical only. There’s a contra entry so it doesn’t change anything.
Prayesh Jain
Got that, Got that. The other question was on, you know, the long term policy, right? What is the contribution of long term policy to the overall retail premium today and how do you see that going ahead?
Ankur Kharbanda
So long term for us has been similar to what it was earlier here. In the last two, three years we have been steady. Around 20% of our business comes from a long term policy and it’s steady from. We’ve not changed our strategy on long term policies
Prayesh Jain
And you know, we have seen a phenomenal growth for the industry in the, you know in the second half of this year in FY26, you know on that base, you know what kind of growth momentum should we see? A normalized level growth for the industry which will stabilize at about 20%. Just thoughts out there. Once this base comes into picture how should we think about growth for the industry over the medium term?
Krishnan Ramachandran
So at least our view on this has not changed. Priyashish which is that on the retail side 17% to 19% CAGR if you take a five year view so broadly that’s where we think the industry growth rate will continue to be at.
Prayesh Jain
Okay and the last question is on the channel mix Bangka again has been at the regulators key focus areas and Bangkok recently contributes to our premium. Do you see any challenge there in the medium term?
Ankur Kharbanda
In fact what we have today is a very diversified channel mix. In fact if you would look at the numbers our overall agency has mix has gone up by 1 1/2% banker remaining a little lesser than what our overall digital business has gone up in terms of our overall mix. We feel whatever changes. One of the changes exposure traps had already been there from rbi. This is that there are no changes which are happening on the banker side commission sides. I don’t think so much change will happen on the business so to say specifically because we have large amount of retail business coming which we are sourcing along with the bank which should not change there.
In fact our growth rate on retail business on bank is around 46% new business and we have been consistently doing that.
Krishnan Ramachandran
I mean just to add Priyesh to what Ankur said one is of course with banks we know our emphasis is on retail to either branch banking or tele and asset is cross sell. So the point which Ankur made on RBI guidelines since a lot of what we do on asset is cross sell again to that extent it is de risk.
Prayesh Jain
Got that. Thank you and wish you all the best.
Operator
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Sanket Godha from Evandes Park. Please proceed.
Sanketh Godha
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. So the first question if you can quantify your group health loss ratio for the year or the cost would be useful and second is whether in the fourth quarter whether there is any change in group health mix towards more indemnity which expedite or our corporate health which expedite your UN compliance related to computer nine months. And lastly from an IFRS point of view if you can give your outstanding DAC number in the balance sheet broken down into both retail and group if possible.
Vishwanath Mahendra
Second first group health loss histories around 60 and half for the year FY26. Actually entire IFRS accounts along with annexures and schedules will be available on our website most of the next week. So there we’ll have all those details which you have mentioned in third question but what was the second question? Second
Sanketh Godha
Was more on group health composition whether it has changed in the fourth quarter. Typically we have 2 third 1 third that is 1 third is corporate health and 2 third is retail sorry Bangkok based health. So whether that number has changed or it is broadly the same
Ankur Kharbanda
Similar no changes as such similar to what it was in previous years as well and the earlier quarters.
Sanketh Godha
Understood, understood. And lastly lastly if you can maybe you’re just wondering there is a kind of improvement in the retail health loss ratio every quarter. So basically it is better at around 66.8 and it has been improving every quarter from when you reported in 1H it was 68.1 then the 66.9 and 66.8. So any anything to read there whether whether this trend will continue is it more to do that you you are growing a little more new business and mix changing in the in the favor of new is driving that number or or in general have you seen frequency severities or even your claim management from hospital point of view played a role for this consistent improvement from 1 nets to FY26?
Krishnan Ramachandran
Sanket1 is this is Krishna and I’ll request Vishnath and Doc to add but broadly there is seasonality to our claims ratio driven by the post monsoon infections. See broadly the way I would characterize our approach to claims ratio in general and specifically retail is you know we do have a plan that we work off right and that plan as Vishnath often says does factor in for you know, basis points worsening if you will on retail claim ratio but more than compensated by operating leverage.
Prayesh Jain
Yeah
Krishnan Ramachandran
So broadly we’re fairly comfortable with the level at which we are operating and in terms of target, I don’t think we want to target the claims ratio that operates below where we are because you also have to understand that there has to be value to customer. There’s a lot of regulatory and policy oversight around making sure that products are affordable, there’s value to customer, et cetera et cetera. So we are quite comfortable with where this is operating and in terms of the underlying incidence rates, claim sizes, all of those you know are in line with our plan assumptions.
That’s how I would characterize it
Sanketh Godha
Sir. The reason I asked sir, is that maybe on a year on year basis it deteriorated 80 bits. I understand there is seasonality but given deterioration is not that huge. But the kind of saving in made on cost is meaningfully very high. So I understand that point that on renewal the cost are meaningfully very low compared to loss. So. So overall combined might not change but. But eventually you ended up reporting a better combined. So. So just wanted to understand whether the quality of loss ratio compared to what you wrote last year in general in the product is improving or.
Or it is sheerly because. Because the new grew very fast and that led to that improvement because OPEX also improved along with it. That is the reason I was asking that question.
Krishnan Ramachandran
Look in terms of quality, you know our approach has been consistently around driving a lifetime value approach to every policy we write. So in terms of quality nothing significant to indicate. In fact the quality only continues to get refined and improve over time. Sanket.
Sanketh Godha
Understood, Understood. And lastly I don’t know whether you will be comfortable doing this data point or not. Out of the total 6,582 crores of retail health, how much is fresh fresh and within that fresh how much is long term?
Krishnan Ramachandran
So look in terms of new, let me call it new and renewal that mix is roughly 40, 60. And in terms of port that ratio has been stable between 20 and 25%.
Sanketh Godha
Understood. In that 40 of fresh fresh how much would be long term? You said for the overall premium it is 20. So. So this just wanted to cut on. On. On. On such long term
Krishnan Ramachandran
Broadly in that ballpark only. Okay.
Sanketh Godha
Okay. Okay. Okay. Thanks for your answer. That’s it for me sir.
Operator
Thank you. Before we move to the next question, a reminder to the participants to ask a question. You may press star and one next question is from the line of Hitendra Pradhan from Maximal Capital. Please go ahead.
Hitendra Pradhan
I hope I’m audible. So my question is again on the same as for the previous participant. I mean because you know the growth is also made by the fresh kind of premiums. So just wanted to understand you know how the renewal book is performing in terms of claims ratio. I mean those vintages, what has been the performance in terms of the claims ratio?
Vishwanath Mahendra
So overall renewal book we can share with you. And we have shared earlier also that the combined ratio of renewal book is more like 97, 98% and we are comfortable with that number. And that’s been study this year, last year. So that’s something that we can share.
Hitendra Pradhan
Got it sir. So sir, like you, you guided that the claims ratio would Be more or less will be in the, you know, similar level going forward. So hence the question. I mean because you know, our growth is also led by, you know, fresh premiums. So can we, you know, see that kind of, you know, inching up going forward also, you know, that’s why the question. But yes, I will, you know, wait for your data and all, sir. And the second question is on the expense ratio you mentioned. Like the benefit will come from the experience ratio side.
That would be in the order of 2 to 2.5%. So what are the levers for for those improvement that would be operating like leverage side or you know, something else if you want to call out.
Vishwanath Mahendra
Yeah, two, three levers. One is, you know, the business mix change. Like you also mentioned new renewal. So the renewal has much lower cost, both cost of acquisition and cost of administering policies. So that’s one lever. Second is sheer economies of scale. The overheads, fixed overheads grow by inflation, let’s say 6, 7% while GWP have seen we are growing at you know, last year was 27%. So that’s second and third, lot of investment has been made in technology, in analytics, gen AI. So that’s also something which is helping to bend the cost curve.
So these are the three major rivers.
Hitendra Pradhan
The final one is on accounting if you can, you know, just explain a bit on the ifrs. Nep like accounting versus you know, the NEP accounting as per one by N. So there seems to be like, you know, divergence and you know, if you can give some qualitative color on how the ifrs, how to think about the NEP or the service revenue as per ifrs. I mean that would be really helpful.
Vishwanath Mahendra
Sure, sure. I can very broadly cover. So under ifrs the top line is gross earned premium. So they don’t have net and premium. So it is gross and premium and gross incurred claims and cost of acquisition as insurance service expense. And the entire cost of reinsurance is given in one line which includes the premium we see it, the earning on that. It includes the commission we receive again amortized and third the claims we receive or going to receive on that premium. So this is how it works. So we have insurance service revenue which is equivalent to gross and premium.
Second is gross insurance service expense which includes gross incurred claim and amortized commission or cost of acquisition. And third is cost of the insurance and that leads to insurance service result. And then we have overheads and investment results.
Hitendra Pradhan
All right. Okay. Okay, sir, thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Showbit Sharma from HDFC Securities Ltd. Please go ahead.
Shobhit Sharma
Yeah hi sir. Thanks for the opportunity. So I have three questions. Firstly on your average ticket size if I look at your average ticket size grown by 4% at the overall level which is lower than the overall growth in the agency average ticket size. So just wanted to understand this at the channel level as as you seen the one by so as as you can see the long term policy that our strategies and the long term policies seem to have taken toll on this so and one of the large distribution partner has been focusing more on the rider attachment increasing some assured.
So ideally this growth should have been in line with the agency channel growth or should have been ideally higher. So what has led to this company level ATS being lower than the ATS growth being lower than the agency channel growth. Secondly if I look at your number of lives which has grown by very good 25 odd percentage. So can you split that growth into retail and group businesses? Just wanted to see understand that how much of the retail business growth has been driven by the new lives. And lastly on your IFRS numbers, if when I went to your 9 months use you had recognized losses from the unrest contracts on the group side I’m assuming you have again recognized those losses on the 12 months number when the schedule comes out.
So can you help us understand what’s your what’s our approach or the strategy on or the need for underwriting these on risk contracts?
Ankur Kharbanda
Sure. Let me answer the first two questions and I’ll ask wish to answer the third one. Let me first attempt to answer the second question first. Overall growth for the organization was 35% and volume growth out of this is 24%. So we have not just grown on value. Volume growth has been very consistently up and it is at 24% on ticket size. On your question you are relating it to some other data point but let me tell you one more data point. Last six months versus first six months the ticket size has grown by almost 1414 and a half percent.
That’s the big ticket size jump largely contributed by GST both on fresh business and renewal which ultimately helps us with a better premium per life and helps us in better overall profitability for us. Has it grown in some channels? In all retail channels it has grown consistently. Not looking at. You know I do not have the split of channel wise but if you just look at the retail channels all of all of our channels have grown in the ticket size both on fresh and renewable your business I’ll ask to.
Sure.
Vishwanath Mahendra
And again just to add the average ticket size And GWP for policy sold by agent. The difference is not only other channel, it is also group and retail. So the first line is all put together which has B2B B2B2C. So more relevant is GWP sold by H which is primarily, which is actually retail. And Ankur has anyways clarified the growth in ticket size on 31st December. Yes, there was loss component and around equal amount passed their last financial year also. So as such there is no impact of that in last financial year.
Because previous financial year also similar number was there and there was no loss component in last quarter. In fact if at all it was unwound.
Shobhit Sharma
So which we just wanted to understand what work, what’s our strategy? What is requiring us to write these one risk contracts?
Vishwanath Mahendra
Yeah, so actually these, if we create a loss component on owners contract it is not necessarily that these are unprofitable. So the concept is we need to consider expected loss ratio, all expenses and risk adjustment. So assume that you are writing an account at 100% core and investment income is your profit. Let’s say in this example still you need to create loss component. Let’s say if you are taking risk adjustment of 5%. So anything which is let’s say 95% or above, you need to create loss component on that.
So it’s not necessarily that this is loss making, it is just that ifrcs if you know it is after risk adjustment more than 100% then you upfront create provision for that. And during the policies cycle you keep unwinding that. That helps. Jobin.
Shobhit Sharma
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks Vishwa. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Nischen Chavati from Kotak. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Hi. You know on the incurred claims, you know, amount of around 5000 odd crores. Can you break this between actual claims and claims claim management expenses.
Vishwanath Mahendra
So claims management expenses generally is 3% of 1 by NGWP Nation.
Unidentified Participant
And the ratio remains similar this year. Is it?
Vishwanath Mahendra
Yeah, it’s similar. Does that number has changed?
Unidentified Participant
Got it. So if I now sort of you know look at the you know, net claims ratio, you know that kind of moves up from around 59.4 to around 61.3 for the year. So you know, how should we read this ratio? You know any specific reason why you know, how would you interpret this ratio and you know the rise and how do we see this going forward?
Vishwanath Mahendra
And you are referring to IFRS numbers or IFRS
Unidentified Participant
On IFRS numbers. Yeah.
Vishwanath Mahendra
So IFS result loss ratio.
Unidentified Participant
Yes. I’m just saying look at net net claims ratio, that is net of claim management expenses. I’m saying, you know that sort of moves from. From 59.4 last year to 61.3. Yeah, sorry.
Krishnan Ramachandran
I think the better thing is to look at retail because you know the mix between retail and group can explain, you know, other changes. So you looked at retail per se. That’s the better answer explanation for you to give. Vishwanath.
Vishwanath Mahendra
Yeah. Which is not really increasing that much. It is similar just that in quarter four. Yeah. The increase in reported number may be higher but the way you are calculating that should show very small increase.
Unidentified Participant
Sure, got it. And the entire claims management can be, I mean it has to be sort of apportioned equally as not equally on a pro rate basis between you know, retail and corporate. Or would you kind of allocate everything to detail?
Vishwanath Mahendra
No, no, we allocate in the proportion of claims.
Unidentified Participant
In the proportion of claims. Got it, Got it. Great. Thank you very much.
Operator
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Praise Jain from Motilal Oswal Financial Services. Please go ahead.
Prayesh Jain
Hi, thanks for the opportunity. Again, just on the hospital bit, you mentioned that I think some 2000 plus hospitals have kind of empanelled on the various measures on protocols and infections, standard procedures for infections that have been taken. You know, are these large hospitals or could you give us some color as to what kind of hospitals have these tied up with? Any large chain has kind of come on board because I’m. Since the number is still too small, you know, what are the large chains talking about this and when do you see the benefits of this kind of coming in for the industry and for new.
Krishnan Ramachandran
So Peyesh, as I mentioned, when we first started this initiative at broadly the common empanelment, what we wanted to drive as an industry is a critical mass of hospitals to be signed up. And we consciously chose to leave out the top 20 groups and maybe we will have a different strategy for the top 20 groups. So the emphasis is on outside of top 20 and 2500 that I refer to would be outside of the top 20 odd. And the idea is to get to maybe 5,000 in the next four, five months. We have ironed out all of the operational topics around common impandiments.
We now have a take that etc. Etc. In terms of benefits. Look, the industry will, to the extent that we have claims flow into these setups, the industry already is seeing benefits from this initiative and also certainly benefits from the initiatives around standardization. Because as I mentioned,
Sanketh Godha
A good part of the cost
Krishnan Ramachandran
When it comes to claims is captured on the care pathway. So the treatment choices that get made fundamentally determine what will be the length of stay and the average claim size. And as we standardize that, that is a significant positive impact to the industry. I just want to re emphasize how important that is. Dr. Babatosh wants to say something.
Operator
Yeah, thank you for your question. The first expectation and a big mandate is to
Krishnan Ramachandran
Enhance access to hospitals for every insured person. And from that point of view in phase one, the mid size and other hospitals have been focused on so that excess goes up because the top 20 as you know, are already a part of almost every insurer’s network or TPS network. It’s a mid segment where more focus has been done to enhance access to claimants insured population. The protocols that Mr. Krishnan mentioned about and which you asked are applicable to all providers, whether, you know, across the length and breadth of segment of providers in the country.
Which basically in interest of consumer in bringing transparency in getting right treatment for right conditions at right severity, it would be very beneficial to markets in general. And specifically it will also have a bearing on cost optimization
Operator
When it comes to claim cost by rationalizing the treatment, optimizing the treatment protocols.
Krishnan Ramachandran
Doc, maybe you can make that real with robotic as an example, right?
Operator
Yeah, in robotic. For example, with advancement of modern medicine,
Krishnan Ramachandran
Robotic is available. However, globally what is followed is very robust. What you call as health technology assessment or health economic evaluation basis, that robotic gets incremental health benefits, but at appropriate cost. When that protocols are applied globally and now increasingly in India, as we discussed and Mr. Kirsten mentioned earlier, would mean that how much incremental benefit robot usage against conventional laparoscopy usage in a particular surgery is gained and what is an appropriate cost for that?
In many surgeries you will find, for example small, small surgeries like fibroid removal, etc. Which robot incrementally does not add much health benefits, but it costs that comes at possibly significant cost which is not appropriate to the benefit gain. Those are the issues and protocols through HTA and HCA that are getting addressed gradually.
Prayesh Jain
Yeah, it does, but just a follow up on that. Do you think this would lead to kind of, you know, more challenges with customers on the kind of treatment that the hospital would suggest and what or what the customer would want and what the insurance company is gonna settle for
Krishnan Ramachandran
In fact, price? I think this is in interest of consumer mostly because then the consumer would be very much aware that what is the appropriate care and treatment for him or her and
Operator
Transparency in healthcare Practices will set in helping consumers
Ankur Kharbanda
Make the right health decisions for self.
Krishnan Ramachandran
This is something that’s globally a journey that many, many mature markets now practice to a very large level of maturity. This is a journey that has begun in India for example, the initiative on infections where we standardized admission criteria for seven infections. You know, it has now been live for nine months and I think there’s been a net benefit in terms of transparency and see customers understand what customers don’t want is surprise. I think this eliminates surprise all sides. So in all these initiatives clearly there’s communication out to hospitals, there’s communication out to customers and when there’s a claim then there’s less and less surprise when we take a position on why we.
Because everybody’s been informed on why we’re doing what we’re doing. And then of course some customers may still choose to pay out of pocket and undergo a certain treatment. But then it’s not a surprise. These are very evidence based. There is enough and more literature even within the country that is available and all these are based on very, very scientific evaluations by very appropriate government and non government authorities.
Prayesh Jain
Got that? Any, any development of the National Digital Health Mission that was, that was, you know, that was picking up some momentum some until some time back. Now we don’t hear anything about it. What’s happening on that and in fact that was supposed to help the outpatient insurance as well. So where is that and how is that kind of shaping up for the industry?
Krishnan Ramachandran
Thank you Prij. In fact there is renewed focus and energy around some components in a phrase manner on the National Digital Health Mission. I would perhaps give you an example of the National Health Claims Exchange where both payers providers have come together to adopt it in a meaningful, in a very big way. Those works with various industry bodies through the regulator and other agencies including nha. GIC is on and there’s lot more work that is being done which is likely to see very positive results fairly sooner than later.
Prayesh Jain
Got that last question. If I look at commission from the Indian GAAP numbers that commission ratio has come down sequentially in spite of the mix moving towards retail health and fresh business. What explains that?
Ankur Kharbanda
Largely this is towards two things. One, the senior, which we rolled out from 1st of April last year, the reduction in commission on the senior and second is on the GST impact as well. So both of these are the reason why this has gone down.
Prayesh Jain
Okay, thank you.
Operator
Thank you ladies and gentlemen. As there are no further questions from the participants, I now hand the conference over to the management for the closing comments.
Krishnan Ramachandran
Thank you very much. Appreciate your taking time on a Friday evening. And for all your questions, if there’s anything further, please do feel free to get in touch with us through Iman Sho. Happy to address any further questions any of you may have, but thank you once more and have a happy week.
Operator
Thank you, sir. On behalf of ICICI securities, that concludes this conference. Thank you all for joining us. And you may now disconnect your lines.