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Informist, Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026

By Nandini Sinha and Vaishali Tyagi

MUMBAI/NEW DELHI – Life Insurance Corp. of India expects the value of new business margin to improve in the coming quarters, the company's management told analysts in a post-earnings conference call Thursday. The company management said it expects the value of new business margin to grow compared to where it is now and settle around the industry average. Both par and non-par business have positively contributed to the margin, the company said. 

For the June quarter, the state-owned company's net value of new business margin was 22.9%, up 750 basis points on year. The net value of new business grew 61.32% on year for the June quarter to INR 31.36 billion.

The insurer is performing strongly in the par business, and wants to outgrow on the non-par side where the margins are higher than par, the management said. "So, the product introduction, modification and withdrawal, etc., they are all the natural phenomena for an insurance company based on the needs of the customers and the experience which the insurers have. So, the product mix will keep on changing based on the needs of the customers," a senior official said. 

Sales of LIC's unit linked insurance plans are expected to improve in the Spetember quarter on the back of improvement in market conditions, the company said. The company's unit linked insurance plans fell 17% on year to INR 7.69 billion for the June quarter. "ULIP (unit linked insurance plans) premium reduction is naturally a function of the market scenario when confidence in the market gets affected due to the high volatility in the market functioning, and naturally that's also one," an official said. 

The insurer's annualised premium equivalent will also increase over the subsequent quarters as its focus on new business increases, the company said. Total annualised premium equivalent for the June quarter was INR 136.92 billion, up 8.2% on year. Of this, individual annualised premium equivalent stood at INR 75.32 billion and group annualised premium equivalent was INR 61.60 billion. 

"...ULIP (unit linked insurance plans) coming back in a bigger number certainly can help in our APE (annualised premium equivalent) growth. Even otherwise, we are looking at increasing our APE growth by the other product lines as well." 

In bancassurance, LIC's focus is much more on annuity sales and unit linked insurance plans. "There, again, we will be trying to get something from the protection bucket as well," an official said, expecting sustained performance in the protection bucket to continue for some more quarters. While both annuity and unit linked insurance plans were affected as remittances took a hit due to the war in West Asia, the company expects both sales and premium to register a robust growth.

For the June quarter, LIC posted a net profit of INR 134.92 billion, driven by a rise in net premium income, which rose nearly 7% on year to INR 1.27 trillion. Thursday, shares of the company ended 1.4% lower at INR 387.55 apiece on the National Stock Exchange. The company announced its financial results after market hours.  End

Edited by Pankaj Aher

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