ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Share price and Fundamental Analysis

Company History

ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Limited is the largest private-sector non-life insurer in India based on Gross Direct Premium Income. The Company offer a comprehensive and well-diversified range of products, including motor insurance, health insurance, travel and personal accident insurance, crop insurance, fire insurance, marine insurance and engineering and liability insurance, through multiple distribution channels. The key distribution channels of the Company include direct sales, individual agents, bank partners, other corporate agents, brokers, and online, through which the Company service its individual, corporate and government customers.

ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Limited was incorporated on October 30, 2000 as a Public Limited Company. The Company obtained the Certificate of Commencement of Business on January 11, 2001 from the Registrar of Companies, Mumbai. It is registered with IRDAI for carrying out the Class of Business pursuant to the registration certificate dated August 3, 2001. At that time, ICICI Bank and Lombard Canada Ltd. (a nominee of Fairfax) held 74% and 26% of the company's then issued and paid-up capital, respectively.

The Company started operations during the year 2000-2001. During the year 2003-04, it became the largest private sector general insurer in India. During the year 2005-06, the company crossed the mark of 1 million policies and crossed the receipt of Rs 1000 crore of Gross Direct Premium Income (GDPI). In 2009-10, the company settled more than 5 million claims. During the year 2013-14, the company's profit after tax crossed Rs 500 crore mark and the number of policies issued by the company crossed 10 million.

During the year 2014-15, the Company's investment book size crossed Rs 10000 crore mark. During the year 2015-16, the company became the first general insurance company in India to issue subordinated debt. During the year 2016-17, ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company crossed Rs 10000 crore GDPI mark.

In September 2017, ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Limited came out with an Initial Public Offer wherein ICICI Bank and FAL proposed to sell 31,761,478 Equity Shares and 54,485,709 Equity Shares constituting 7.00% and 12.00% of the Company's issued and paid-up capital, to the public respectively. There was no fresh issue of shares from ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company. The shares of ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company were listed on the bourses on 27 September 2017 and it became the first pure play general insurance company in India to list on the stock exchanges.

On 5 April 2018, Ola, India's leading and one of the world's largest ride-sharing companies, launched a comprehensive intrip insurance program for customers across India in partnership with Acko General Insurance Ltd and ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company, which provides benefits in cases of loss of baggage or laptops, missed flights, accidental medical expense, ambulance transportation cover, and much more.

On 20 August 2018, ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company announced that it has launched India's first Artificial intelligence (AI) based technology to facilitate instant health insurance claims approval. As a result, the traditional cashless claim request which takes an average of 60 minutes of processing has been drastically brought down to a minute using AI.

On 23 August 2018, ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company announced that it has implemented host of initiatives to support the customers affected by Kerala floods. The company has written premium of Rs. 85.98 crs (primarily motor, property & health insurance) during FY 2017-18 which comprises 0.7% of gross direct premium income (GDPI) during FY 2017-18 (1.57% of the GDPI for all non-life insurance companies from Kerala State) and Rs. 19.24 crs during Q1 FY 2018-19 which comprises 0.51% of gross direct premium income (GDPI). As of now, the number of claims received are limited considering that the flood waters are yet to recede in the State of Kerala. The company has put in place a well-defined retention limit for each product segment which defines its maximum 'per risk' and 'per event' exposure to protect its balance sheet and reduce volatility of its earnings.

On 17 September 2018, ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company announced the launch of the industry's first application to facilitate speedier claim verification process. Currently, claim settlement cases that need to be verified takes from a day to more than a week in some cases. This time intensive process will be reduced drastically to a few hours with the app. The state of the art technology deployed in the app will also benefit the company as it will be able to identify incidents of fraud claim quickly, making the process more efficient and ensuring that genuine cases are resolved in a speedy manner. Further, the solution will integrate with the company's health claims management system that has inbuilt alerts to trigger suspect claims for verification.

On 30th October, 2019, the Company entered into a business transfer agreement to acquire proprietary software, platforms and underlying intellectual property assets developed by Unbox Technologies Private Limited along with ancillary movable assets for housing the Software and employees for operations, maintenance and development of the Software for an aggregate consideration of Rs 2,248,500 thousands on a slump sale basis being managements estimate of fair value of the identifiable assets.

The COVID-19 has been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on 11 March 2020. The pandemic has led to a significant impact on the Indian Financial markets and an overall decline in the economic activities all across the world. On 24 March 2020, the Union Government of India has announced a 21-day lockdown, which was further extended by 19 days, across the country for containment of the pandemic.

Gross Direct Premium Income (GDPI) of the Company stood at Rs 133.13 billion in FY2020 compared to Rs 144.88 billion in FY2019, a de-growth of 8.1%.Excluding crop segment, GDPI of the Company increased to Rs 133.02 billion in FY2020 compared to Rs 120.36 billion in FY2019, registering a growth of 10.5%.

During year 2021-22, the Board of Directors of the Company at their Meeting held on August 21, 2020 had approved the Scheme of Arrangement among Bharti AXA General Insurance Company Limited and the Company and their respective shareholders and creditors for demerger of non-life insurance business of erstwhile Bharti AXA General Insurance Company Limited into the Company which was completed and made effective from September 8, 2021 with the appointed date, April 1, 2020. Pursuant to Scheme becoming effective from said Date, the Board of Directors of the Company allotted equity shares of face value of Rs. 10/- each as a part consideration to the Shareholders of Bharti AXA, whereby the shareholding of ICICI Bank Limited reduced from 51.87% to 48.08% and accordingly, the Company ceased to be a subsidiary of ICICI Bank with effect from the date of allotment i.e. September 8, 2021.

In 2022, the Company had a network of 283 branches and 908 Virtual Offices. During the year 2022, the Company has issued 29.3 million policies and settled over 2.3 million claims. The Gross Direct Premium income was Rs. 179.77 billion, translating into a market share of 8.1% among all non-life insurers in India and 13.8% among private-sector non-life insurers in India. As at March 31, 2022, Company had Rs. 387.86 billion in Total Investment Assets.

In 2023, the Company had a network of 305 branches and 917 Virtual Offices. During the year 2023, the Company has issued 32.7 million policies and settled over 3.6 million claims. The Gross Direct Premium income was Rs. 210.25 billion, translating into a market share of 8.2% among all non-life insurers in India and 15.9% among private-sector non-life insurers in India. As at March 31, 2023, Company had Rs. 43.80 billion in Total Investment Assets.