Exide Life eyes 30% growth in new premium biz in FY22
To focus on protection, rider plans; Covid has fuelled growth of term policies: MD
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New Delhi Exide Life Insurance expects over 30 per cent jump in new business premium during the current financial year, on the back of higher sales for term life products as well as focus on rider-based plans, a top company official said.
"Last year when the pandemic hit and afterwards people got used to dealing with the new normal, we found that we had an improvement in customers paying their renewal premium. We had improvement in persistency figure as well," Exide Life Insurance MD and CEO Kshitij Jain said in an interaction.
He said following the Covid-19 outbreak, there have been a rise for protection policies that the company is selling.
"In the past, we were doing 8-10 per cent of our business in protection policies. But, following the Covid-19 issue last year, we are now doing close to 18 per cent of our business in protection. It's almost doubling," Jain said.
With increasing awareness about term insurance, the company expects this number to go up further. Its business through agency channels and direct channels is doing well. More sales are happening for relatively larger premium size policies. The small-ticket policies have come down, while the large premium policies have gone up. "This year, I am expecting a significant growth in our new business premium. Unless something seriously goes wrong, my expectation is that we will grow upwards of 30 per cent in new business premiums (in FY22). So, this run rate that we started in April (over 37 per cent growth in new business premium), we hope to continue during the year (as well)," Jain said.
The insurer also witnessed a significant rise in claims settlement in last fiscal. "We had a rise of upwards of 40 per cent in the number of claims paid out. But the claim settlement ratio had improved despite the fact that we were in a year where the claims went up significantly. Our claims settlement ratio at 98.54 per cent is at an all-time high in 2020-21," said the official. Of this, the coronavirus-related claims in individual business were roughly 10 per cent, he said adding that there was also a significant uptick in death claims due to heart failures.
"How many claims were brought about by the lockdown environment, I can't comment. For instance, the number of claims on account of heart failure went up dramatically last year. Is this on account of the fact that people were restricted to home and therefore stressed, we don't have enough data to be able to comment on that," he added.
