Mumbai, June 07:
State owned New India Assurance (NIA) on Monday reported a 90.6 per cent jump in net profit at Rs 241 crore for the last quarter of the fiscal ended March 2021. NICAL, the market leader in non-life insurance business in India, had reported a net profit of Rs 127 crore in the same quarter of 2019-20.
The listed general insurer, with a market share of 14.33 per cent, had managed to reduce its combined ratio by 3.15 per cent to 113.28 per cent along with a substantial improvement in incurred claim ratio during FY 2020-21, said Atul Sahai, CMD, NIACL.
NIA didn't announce any dividend for the year as the insurance regulator IRDAI had earlier advised the insurers to conserve capital and be cautious while declaring dividends due to Covid-19 pandemic situation.
Net premium grew by 15.9 per cent year-on-year to Rs 7,291 crore in Q4 FY21 as against Rs 6,289 crore earlier.
The gross premium written during the reported quarter grew to Rs 9,070 crore as against Rs 8,145 crore.
For the full fiscal year FY21, company's net profit grew by 13.2 per cent to Rs 1,605 crore. Net premium jumped 10.12 per cent to Rs 26,966 crore during the yaer..
The insurer said its net worth surged by 40 per cent to Rs 36,451 crore.
''FY21 was a challenging year. Apart from Covid-19 pandemic related issues at the beginning as well as towards the end of the year, the industry also witnessed a few catastrophe events as well. However, the company was able to put up a resilient performance. Indian business grew by 6.2 per cent versus industry growth of 5.2 per cent and increased its market share to 14.33 per cent,'' said Sahay.
There was a substantial improvement in incurred claim ratio. This improvement was despite CAT event related losses of 150 Cr. The expense ratio increased steeply due to increase in employee pension liability driven by higher annuity costs. The results were also adversely impacted due to a few one-off provisions. This includes provision for bad debts of close to 165 crore primarily pertaining to some old receivables, as well investment provisions of about 369 crore primarily pertaining to debt instruments which have defaulted, explained Sahay..
The company's foreign operations continue to be profitable and solvency ratio was healthy at 2.13x.
The board of directors approved the nomination of Sunil Kumar Singh, deputy general manager, as the chief underwriting officer of the company with effect from March 12, 2021. ''
C S Ayyappan, deputy general manager, has been approved as the chief risk officer by the board, it added.
Stock of NICAL closed 1.44 per cent up at Rs 176.70 apiece on BSE.