Max Life Expects 28% New Business Margins In Fiscal 2024

Max Life Insurance Co. expects value for new business margins in the range of 28–29% for fiscal 2024, according to Chief Executive Officer Prashant Tripathy.

This comes after the company reported its highest-ever VNB margins of 31.2% in FY23, some of which could be attributable to the inflated demand for high-ticket, non-par savings policies in Q4, after the budget announcement, taxing these policies after April 1, 2023.

These products have higher margins, according to Tripathy. Also, Max Life added some features to protection plans that aided high margins and the new business growth of 28% year-on-year.

While March was a blockbuster month not just for Max Life but the industry as a whole, Tripathy expects private life insurers to have double-digit growth this year and expects the overall industry growth to be 8–9%, contrary to expectations.

Max Life, he said, is making huge investments in their own channels—agency, direct, and digital—opening new offices, ramping up capacity, and winning new partnerships. As a result, the company expects the impact of tax changes to be marginal.

While the margins for the year could be slightly lower compared to last year owing to these additional investment costs, Tripathy does not see much of an impact because of the reduction in non-par savings in their business strategy.

He is also very optimistic about protection. "We have very strong growth in protection; I think we will come upwards of 30% growth on the retail side and similar numbers or higher for credit life. So we're witnessing good growth, and our plan is to accelerate it further, so we're very optimistic."

He expects the protection contribution to their product portfolio to go up by about 150 to 200 basis points from current 6-7% levels.

The relationship with banks was undergoing open architecture, due to which countershare dropped, according to Tripathy. But they have maintained a strong market share position at around 70% from 100–98% levels.

However, the company is "not losing incremental market share" and expects the "bank channels to start firing really well", he said.

Watch the full interview below: