ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Ltd Q1 FY23 Earnings Conference Call Insights

Key highlights from ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Ltd (ICICIPRULI) Q1 FY23 Earnings Concall

Q&A Highlights:

• Sanketh Godha from Spark Capital asked about the reason for individual protection declining almost 40% in current year. N. S. Kannan MD replied that the company had challenges in retail protection and supply side challenges.  ICICIPRULI feels that in 3Q23, the retail protection business will see a YonY growth.

• Sanketh Godha of Spark Capital enquired about the reinsurance with respect to the group business. Satyan Jambunathan CFO said that the group business tends to be more of a class underwriting as opposed to individual underwriting. ICICIPRULI doesn’t believe reinsurance is having any constraining influence or challenge as far as group business growth is concerned.

• Avinash Singh from Emkay Global asked if the reduction in steepness in the yield curve has had any impact on the non-par products saving margins. Satyan Jambunathan CFO replied that the yield curve steepness actually affects prospective pricing that ICICIPRULI offer to customers. It doesn’t affect margins.

• Nidhesh Jain from Investec India also asked about growth in the next four years. N. S. Kannan MD replied that going forward, the company is cognizant of the priorities of some of the channel partners changing. So the guidance is, ICICIPRULI’s VNB development, despite what happens to the top line would be broadly in line with the industry’s VNB development.

• Deepika Mundra of JPMorgan asked that on the regulatory front if there is a scope for the regulators contemplating using commissions as a tool to improve penetration in the industry. N. S. Kannan MD said nothing is heard on anything being looked at on the commission as a tool for funding the penetration.

• Deepika Mundra of JPMorgan asked that on higher inflation if the company is seeing any risk to any particular categories of products in terms of premium growth. N. S. Kannan MD said that if rates go up the demand for guaranteed products can get a little bit impacted.

• Madhukar Ladha with Elara Capital asked about the split in growth in group protection between GTI and credit protect. Satyan Jambunathan CFO said that at a broad level, within group, in 1Q23, credit life did much better than the group term.

• Madhukar Ladha with Elara Capital also asked what percentage of the annuity sales is the pension corpus converting into an annuity. Satyan Jambunathan CFO answered that the NPS conversion will still take some years to happen. The significant explosion in opportunity is like 5-10 years away. This is more of investing for the future.