'Want to grow better than industry but mindful of the quality of business'

With the general insurance industry seeing a slowdown, SBI General Insurance Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer NAVEEN CHANDRA JHA spoke with Subrata Panda and Aathira Varier in Mumbai about how the company has managed to grow above the industry and its strategies for navigating the current challenges. Edited excerpts:

- Subrata Panda and Aathira Varier

How has the year been and what are your growth plans for the rest of the year?

This year has been good, but we had expected even better numbers and the industry faced a slowdown. We have grown by around 14 per cent Y-o-Y, against the industry's 11 per cent. The best part is that whatever we had strategized at the beginning of the year has yielded results but we still have a long way to go. We are looking to grow at a better rate than the industry as far as the top line is concerned. On the bottom line, our profit in the first half of FY25 was seven times the profit in the same period last year. For FY25, our target is to increase profit by at least two-three times over last year's.

How did you manage to grow your profitability by seven times?