© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Country’s largest insurer Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), on Monday reported a marginal 2.5 per cent increase in its standalone profit after tax at Rs 13,762 crore in the quarter ended March 2024 as against Rs 13,427 crore in the year-ago period.
The board of LIC recommended a final dividend of Rs 6 per share for FY 2023-24. Earlier, during the year an interim dividend of Rs 4 was declared. The flat profit in the quarter due to the impact of wage revision.
For the year ended March 31, 2024, profit after tax was Rs 40,676 crore as compared to Rs 36,397 crore for FY2023.
LIC said it changed its accounting policy in September 2022 regarding transfer of amount pertaining to the accretion on the available solvency margin from non-participating policyholders account to shareholders account.
Accordingly, it transferred a total amount of Rs 29,518.75 crore (net of tax) in FY 2023-24 compared to Rs 27,240.75 crore in the FY2022-23, which included an amount of Rs 4,542.31 crore pertaining to the quarter ended March 31, 2022.
“We have more than doubled our share of non-par business within our individual business. Now we intend to focus our strategic interventions to maximize our market share across categories. At the same time, our sharp focus on various parameters which create superior value for all stakeholders shall continue, as demonstrated,” LIC Chairperson Siddhartha Mohanty said.
In terms of market share measured by first year premium income (FYPI), as per IRDAI, LIC continues to be the market leader by market share in the Indian life insurance business with overall market share of 58.87 per cent. For the year ended March 2024, LIC had a market share of 38.44 per cent in individual business and 72.3 per cent in the group business.
During the year, LIC’s total investment in equities stood at Rs 1,30,000 crore and in corporate bonds at Rs 78,000 crore.
Its total premium income for FY2024 was Rs 4,75,070 crore as compared to Rs 4,74,005 crore in FY2023. Total individual business premium increased to Rs 3,03,768 crore from Rs 2,92,763 crore FY2023. The group business total premium income stood at Rs 1,71,302 crore as compared to Rs 1,81,242 crore.
LIC sold a total of 2,03,92,973 in the individual segment during the year.
The Value of New Business (VNB) for FY2024 was Rs 9,583 crore as compared to Rs 9,156 crore in FY2023, registering a growth of 4.66 per cent. The solvency ratio, a measure of capital adequacy, as on March 31, 2024, increased to 1.98 as against 1.87 on March 31, 2023.
Mohanty said there are key initiatives related to distribution channel and digital transformation underway.
“We are confident that our employees, agents and our channel partners are fully committed to achieving these objectives. We look forward to this current year as the one in which our topline growth trajectory will be back in focus,” he said.
LIC’s shares ended 0.58 per cent up at Rs 1,035.8 apiece on the BSE.
