High reinsurance costs a bigger worry for life insurers

Aditya Birla Sun Life Insurance (ABSLI), which ended FY24 with around ₹17,500 crore in gross written premiums (GWP), aims to double its business in the next three years.

- Kamlesh Rao, MD, Aditya Birla Sun Life

In a conversation with Narayanan V, MD & CEO Kamlesh Rao outlines the company's growth strategy, distribution mix, and the impact of recent regulatory changes.

How has your business performed this fiscal? In Q1, we achieved a 20% growth, slightly below the private industry's growth of 26%.

However, in Q2, our GWP growth surged to 44%, significantly outperforming the private sector.

For H1 FY25, our GWP increased by 33%, surpassing the industry growth of 21% and the private life insurance sector's 24%.ABSLI ended FY24 with ?17,260 crore in GWP.Our goal is to double our business in three years, requiring an annual growth rate of 25-26%.

We have exceeded that target in the first six months of this year.

Moving forward, we will focus on driving premium growth through a balanced mix of proprietary channels (agents and digital) and partnerships (bancassurance), while improving productivity and capacity.

What is your distribution plan to achieve premium growth? Proprietary and bancassurance channels contribute 38% and 62% of ABSLI's business, respectively, with both showing strong performance in H1FY25.

Proprietary business grew by 32%, while bancassurance grew by 34%.