Chennai: Bharti AXA General Insurance, a joint venture between Bharti Enterprises, and insurance giant AXA said the company has turned profitablein the first half of the current financial year.
The company registered growth in premium income and posted maiden profit in the first six months of this fiscal.
It recorded an increase of 38 per cent in its gross written premium (GWP) to Rs 1,087 crore in the first half of financial year 2018-19 from Rs 788 crore in the corresponding period of 2017-18.
MD and CEO, Bharti AXA General Insurance, Sanjeev Srinivasan, said, “We are pleased to be on the path of profitability and this has been an outcome of superior risk selection, improved operating efficiencies and our razor-sharp focus on automation and digitization.Theseeffortshave resulted in postingmaiden profits for the company in the first half of financial year 2018-19 and will help drive the growth momentum.”
Apart from retail business that grew by 19 per cent in the first half of 2018-19, Bharti AXA General Insurance also saw its corporate business growing by 67 per cent in the same period. Further, crop insurance surged by 91 per cent during the April-September period of 2018-19.
The company witnessed overall growth across product lines and all channels and healthy growth in segments like health insurance, followed by personal accident and travel, and commercial linesand crop.
Its combined ratio, a measure of profitability that takes into account claims and expenses as a proportion of premiums, improved by over 15 percentage points to 116.5 per cent in the half-year of 2018-19 from 131.6 per cent in the same period of 2017-18.
At the same time, its loss ratio has reduced to 77.8 per cent in the first half of the current fiscal from 85.7 per cent in the same period a year ago, while while expense ratio witnessed a significant dip at 38.7 percent in the half-year of 2018-19 against 45.9 per cent in the corresponding period of 2017-18.