“Our premium growth has came from Health, Life Re and Surety portfolios. We are committed to disciplined underwriting, particularly Fire and Engineering. Fire segment continues to witness intense competitive pressures at both the insurance and reinsurance levels, which has led to very soft market conditions.Our response at this stage is to remain closely engaged with cedants and continuously monitor rate movements,” said Hitesh Joshi, CMD, GIC Re.
Mumbai:Riding on higher premium and lower underwrting losses, GIC Re on Thursday reported a 10 per cent year-on-year rise in net profit to Rs 1,922 crore in the first quarter ended June 2026.
The state-owned reinsurance company had earned Rs 1,752 crore in the same quarter in the previous financial year.
Despite prevailing soft pricing and intense competition both in domestic and international markets, the ninth largest global reinsurer managed to grow its gross premium by nine per cent y-o-y to Rs 13,475 crore during the reporting quarter, against Rs 12,388 crore in the year-ago period.
Almost 83 per cent of its premium has come from the Indian market while the rest is from overseas markets spanning across 137 countries.
GIC Re’s combined ratio,a key financial metric used by re/insurance companies to measure the profitability, improved by 2.06 per cent to 104.88 per cent in Q1FY27 as against 106.94 per cent for Q1FY26.
The company’s underwriting loss declined by 20 per cent y-o-y to Rs 724 crore in Q1FY27 as against Rs 907 crore in the same period a year ago.
“Our premium growth during the quarter has came from Health, Life Re and Surety portfolios. We are committed to disciplined underwriting, particularly Fire and Engineering.On the international portfolio, our focus continues on exploring opportunities leveraging our credit rating and we will continue to write business where pricing, terms and risk quality meet our underwriting expectations. We will allocate capital based on our assessment of price adequacy and solvency position,” said Hitesh Joshi, CMD, GIC Re.
According to Joshi, fire segment continues to witness intense competitive pressures at both the insurance and reinsurance levels, which has led to very soft market conditions.
“Our response at this stage is to remain closely engaged with cedants and continuously monitor rate movements,” he explained.
The third largest Asian reinsurer has augmented its Motor, Health and Life reinsurance portfolio by two per cent, 36 per cent and 145 per cent respectively, it has drastically cut down its Crop portfolio by 23 per vent during Q1FY27.
GIC Re’s investment income marginally declined to Rs 3,265.51 crore in the quarter ending on June 2026 as compared to Rs 3,313.74 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal.
The reinsurer’s incurred claims ratio fell to 85.04 per cent in the reporting quarter from 90.42 per cent in the corresponding quarter of FY 26.
Total income of the re-insurer declined marginally to Rs 13,330 crore in the June quarter compared to Rs 13,352 crore in the same quarter a year ago.
Total assets of the company rose to Rs 2,07,790 crore against Rs 1,97,540 crore in the previous year.
Net Worth of the company (including fair value change account) increased to Rs 90,790 crore as against Rs 89,513 crore as on June 30, 2025.
GIC Re is the largest reinsurer in the domestic reinsurance market and leads most of the Indian companies’ treaty programmes and facultative placements.