'If through growth and serving the customer we become number one, we will be very happy and very proud.'
Gautam Adani-owned Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ) will replace IT major Wipro in the 30-share BSE Sensex from June 24, according to an official announcement on Friday. This marks the first inclusion of any Adani Group firm in Sensex. The group has 10 listed firms with a combined market valuation surpassing Rs 17 lakh crore.
The insurer is a venture between banking major ICICI Bank and the UK's Prudential Corporation Holdings. Singapore's Temasek and Premji Invest are also the shareholders.
rediffGURU Vipul Bhavsar answers readers' personal income tax queries.
The reduction in goods & services tax (GST) on individual life and health insurance premiums has been called a "landmark step" for making insurance affordable and inclusive. In a panel discussion at the Business Standard BFSI Insight Summit 2025, Anup Bagchi, managing director (MD) & chief executive officer (CEO) of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance; Mahesh Balasubramanian, MD & CEO of Kotak Life Insurance; Tarun Chugh, MD & CEO of Bajaj Life Insurance; and Ratnakar Patnaik, MD of Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), listed what else the industry needs to reach more people.
rediffGURU Vipul Bhavsar answers readers' personal income tax queries.
State-backed Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) recorded strong growth in the value of new business (VNB) margin in the third quarter of financial year 2023-24 (Q3FY24) while major listed private life insurers reported a weak performance. VNB refers to the profit that an insurer is likely to garner from new business, which comes from policies sold in a particular period. VNB margin is the profit margin of the insurer.
The country's largest private sector life insurer, ICICI Prudential Life, on Wednesday said it will hire 3,000 people in the next two months, debunking reports of any reduction in workforce.
The 100-stock largecap basket of Mutual funds (MFs) has seen a major reshuffle in the latest semi-annual reclassification with seven midcap stocks and four new listings earning the largecap tag. According to a report from Nuvama Alternative & Quantitative Research, the midcap stocks that have been upgraded include CG Power, Rail Vikas Nigam, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, Polycab India, Indus Towers, Cummins India, and Info Edge.
Ask rediffGURU Naveenn Kummar your insurance mutual fund and personal finance-related questions.
The new business premium (NBP) of life insurance companies dropped 21.7 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) to Rs 30,218.71 crore in December 2024 on the back of a steep fall in business. According to data published by the Life Insurance Council, LIC's premium dropped 41.15 per cent Y-o-Y to Rs 13,523.87 crore while private insurers reported 7 per cent growth in NBP to Rs 16,694.85 crore as the industry absorbs the impact of the revised surrender value norms.
ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Ltd will consider an initial public offering on reaching an overall market share of around 10 per cent even as ICICI Prudential Life Insurance plans to increase its capital base in the current fiscal.
Sandeep Bakhshi named chief operating officer, who would be handling all the businesses.
If nominees pass away, distribution is governed by succession laws of insured's religion.
Kochhar retires by rotation, and being eligible, has offered herself for reappointment as director, said the broking arm in a notice for its Annual General Meeting to be held on August 30
Our focus around technology, cost efficiency, persistency and effective distribution channel will continue, says the ICICI Bank MD and CEO.
Prudential ICICI's managing director, Shikha Sharma, talks about how the journey has been so far and also why she thinks unit-linked insurance plans are the best allocators of long-term funds.
The board of ICICI Bank, the country's second-largest lender, will take a final call on appointing a successor to K V Kamath, its present managing director and chief executive officer, next month.
A seasoned banker with over 30 years of experience, Bakhshi is a mechanical engineer from Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh. He has a post-graduate degree in management from Xavier Labour Relations Institute.
The life insurance industry reported a 25.28 per cent decline in new business premium income in November 2023 to Rs 26,494.83 crore from Rs 34,588.8 crore recorded a year ago. The fall in group premium and change in taxation norms for policies with a higher ticket size dragged the premiums of the state-run Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) and private insurers, respectively. According to the data released by the Life Insurance Council, the premium of private insurers slipped 9.33 per cent Y-o-Y to Rs 10,360.29 crore from Rs 11,426.73 crore as a result of a change in product mix due to the measures taken to counter the impact of tax imposed on the premiums of Rs 5 lakh.
ICICI Pru's IPO is being managed by 10 investment banks, including Bank of America Merrill Lynch and ICICI Securities
Young investors with a higher risk appetite are better off with a combination of term insurance and equity funds.
Of the existing set of potential leaders, Bakhshi was clearly the only choice as he beat out other high-level candidates that included executive directors Anup Bagchi, Vishakha Mulye, NS Kannan, and Vijay Chandok who were lacking the all-round game that Bakhshi has.
Life insurance companies reported a 13.16 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) growth in new business premium (NBP), totting up Rs 30,347 crore in October, even as the number of policies sold saw a sharp decline. The growth was largely driven by strong performance from private sector life insurers.
Top Indian private sector lender ICICI Bank, which owns nearly 68 percent of the insurer, is selling up to 181.34 million shares in the IPO.
More than half a dozen life insurance companies -- that are operating for nearly a decade now -- have cut their branch presence significantly in the last six months in a bid to cut cost and increase efficiency.
SBI Life, ICICI Pru have seen their valuations increase by 33 per cent and 35 per cent recently. SBI Life Insurance has seen its valuation soar after just 3 months while ICICI Prudential's valuation has increased in just 5 months.
Although the pricing for the IPO is yet to be finalised, people in the know said the band could be Rs 275-300
Life insurance companies have yet to see the entry of the younger generation in a big way. This was highlighted by N S Kannan, executive director, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, while launching an insurance product for cancer.
The market capitalisation (mcap) cutoff to qualify for mutual funds' (MFs') largecap universe is likely to go up for the fifth consecutive time to touch the Rs 1 trillion mark for the first time. A fresh list of largecap, midcap, and smallcap stocks is set to be released by the Association of Mutual Funds in India (Amfi) in the first week of January.
Some of the key names include: Maruti, M&M, Ashok Leyland, Britannia, Ultratech, JK Cement, Havells, Voltas, Amber, Metro, Trent, LemonTree, Indian Hotels, Niva Bupa, HDFC Life, IGL, Acme Solar, Suzlon, Swiggy, Delhivery, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Bajaj Finance, Shriram Finance," according to a report by Motilal Oswal Financial Services.
All the four listed private life insurance companies recorded a drop in value of new business (VNB) margin in the financial year 2023-24 (FY24) as compared to FY23. This is because of a higher share of unit-linked insurance plans (Ulips) in the product mix. VNB is a measure of the economic value of profits expected to emerge from a new business.
Mutual funds' largecap investment universe is expected to see seven changes in the upcoming stock reclassification exercise by the Association of Mutual Funds in India (Amfi). According to a report by IIFL Securities, Hero MotoCorp, Zydus Lifesciences, JSW Energy, NHPC, Bharat Heavy Electricals, Bosch and Samvardhana Motherson are expected to earn upgrades in the revised list of largecap, midcap and smallcap stocks set to be released in the first week of July. Amfi revises the list at the start of January and July every year based on the previous six-month performance of the stock.
The share of life insurance policies sold by top private insurers in the rural areas declined in the financial year 2023-24 (FY24) compared to previous year. SBI Life, HDFC Life, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance -- the top three players from the private sector-- have seen the share of insurance policies sold in rural areas drop in FY24 as compared to the previous financial year. Max Life Insurance's share of rural policies recorded an increase in FY24.
'Investing in these funds makes sense if their net yield over better-quality funds -- corporate bond funds or banking and PSU funds -- is meaningful.'
"There is a large workforce working as agents for life insurance companies and other banking and financial products who require specialised training as financial advisers," ICICI Prudential AMC, head -- retail sales and distribution, Vikram Kaushal said. Of the estimated 68,000 financial advisers available in the country, almost 38,000 are working for ICICI Prudential, he said.
Private life insurers experienced reasonable growth in the July-September quarter (second quarter, or Q2) of 2023-24 (FY24), and the October data is also encouraging. The individual weighted received premium (WRP) for private players grew by 19.8 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) in October. However, Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India had slower growth, pulling the industry growth rate down to 13 per cent Y-o-Y.
High-value insurance policies experienced muted growth in the first six months of the current financial year after the Centre decided to tax such products in this year's Budget. Simultaneously, there has been a marked improvement in the growth of policies with premiums of 'less than Rs 5 lakh', mainly originating from smaller cities. During this year's Budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed that insurance policies (excluding unit linked insurance plans or ULIPs) with an aggregate premium exceeding Rs 5 lakh, and the maturity amount, would not be exempt from tax.