General insurer ICICI Lombard on Tuesday said its net income jumped almost 40 per cent to Rs 437 crore for the March quarter, boosted by the base effect in the year-ago period when it took a heavy hit from the pandemic-related claims.
Premium income just inched up 6.7 per cent in the reporting quarter to Rs 4,977 crore, the private sector general insurer said.
For the full fiscal, the ICICI Bank group company's net income grew 36 per cent year-on-year to Rs 1,729 crore on a gross written premium of Rs 21,025 crore, the chief financial officer and chief risk officer Gopal Balachandran told reporters during an earnings call.
He also said the company grew marginally higher than the industry, which clipped a tad lower at 16.4 per cent for the full fiscal.
Given the massive volatility in the equity markets in February and March, the company's investment gains almost halved to Rs 453 crore for the full year from Rs 738 crore in FY22, and the same for the reporting quarter declined to Rs 159 crore from Rs 136 crore.
The key profitability metric, the combined ratio, stood at 104.5 in FY23 against 108.8 per cent in FY22. In the March quarter, it was 104.2 against 103.2 a year ago.
The combined ratio is the net of incurred claims/net earned premium plus management expenses after deducting the commission on reinsurance/net written premium.
Management expenses is the commission paid directly and on inward reinsurance along with operating expenses related to the insurance business. The regulator Irdai has capped the management at 30 per cent from this fiscal.
The board has proposed a final dividend of Rs 5.50 per share for the full year, taking the overall payout in the year to Rs 10 per share.
The company's solvency ratio stood at 2.51x as against 2.45x in December 2022, while the regulatory minimum is 1.50x. The solvency ratio was 2.46x as of March 2022.
The company has issued over 32.7 million policies and settled 3.6 million claims on a gross written premium of Rs 21,772 crore for the year.