Max Life records strong profitable growth in H1 FY20

Max Life records strong profitable growth in H1 FY20 – Value of New Business (VNB) up 25% to Rs. 364 crore

Highlights of all-round performance in H1 FY20 (April – Sept 2019) as compared to H1 FY19, and as on 30th September 2019

Individual Adjusted Sales up by 23% to Rs. 1,693 crore

Assets Under Management up by 17% to Rs. 65,425 crore

Sum Assured in Force increases up by 34% to Rs. 8,25,875 crore

Embedded value increased to Rs. 9,831 crore at ROEV of 18.3%

 Max Life Insurance Company Ltd. (“Max Life”/Company”) has recorded a strong profitable growth in the first half of the Financial Year 2019-20 with Value of New Business (VNB) increased by 25% to Rs. 364 crore due to a significant growth in new business, both at bank partnerships and proprietary channels, as well as higher share of protection products. Gross written premium of the Company grew by 14%to Rs. 6,432 crore, while the new business premium grew by 20% to Rs. 2,291 crore and the renewal premium recorded growth of 12% to Rs. 4,141 crore in H1 FY20 over H1 FY19. During this period, Individual adjusted sales stood at Rs. 1,693 crore, growing 23% over the same period in the last financial year, which has been driven by a mix of proprietary and bancassurance channels. The Embedded Value (post interim shareholder dividend) stood at Rs. 9,831 crore, with an Operating Return of Embedded Value (RoEV) of 18.3% in H1 FY20.

The Board of Directors of Max Life Insurance in a board meeting held on 6^th November 2019, approved an interim dividend of Rs. 86 crore (including dividend distribution tax).

Commenting on the performance of the Company, Mr. Prashant Tripathy, Managing Director & CEO, Max Life said, “Max Life has delivered another year of consistent business performance. We continued to deliver profitable and consistent growth. This has been driven by a focus on building proprietary channels and bank partnerships, improvements in key health parameters and enhancement of existing products.”

Max Life has performed well on all key business parameters during H1 FY20:

• Max Life outperformed the private industry growth by 674 basis points in the first half of the financial year, and improved private market share to 9.3%, basis individual adjusted first year premium.
• New Business Premium at Rs. 2,291 crore, recorded growth of 20% as compared to H1 FY19
• 18% growth in proprietary channels sales over H1 FY19 with a 33% share of the overall distribution mix for individual business (Ind. APE Basis)
• Individual Protection penetration (Ind. APE basis) YoY growth has been 32%
• Solvency Ratio estimated to be ~224% (pre-dividend), which is significantly higher than the regulatory requirement of 150%, indicating the Company’s strong and stable financial position
• The Company recorded 13^thmonth persistency at 85.1% (up by 118 bps YoY)
• Assets Under Management (AUM) increased by 17% YoY to Rs. 65,425 crore
• Sum Assured in Force has increased to Rs. 8,25,875 crore in H1 FY20 from Rs. 6,16,528 crore in H1 FY19

  

Key Business Drivers	Unit	Half Year Ended		Y-o-Y Growth
		Sep 2019	Sep 2018
a)  Individual APE*	Rs. Crore	1,717	1,405	22%
b)  Gross Written Premium Income	Rs. Crore	6,432	5,619	14%
New Business Premium		2,291	1,909	20%
Renewal Premium		4,141	3,711	12%
d)   Share Capital	Rs. Crore	1,919	1,919
e)  Assets Under Management	Rs. Crore	65,425	56,070	17%
f)  Individual Policies in Force	No. Lacs	43.04	41.5	4%
g)  Sum Assured in Force	Rs. Crore	8,25,875	6,16,528	34%
h) Persistency (13th Month)	%	85.1	83.9	118 bps
i) Persistency (61st Month)	%	52.6	54.5	-188 bps

* Individual Annualised Premium Equivalent (APE)– Premium adjusted for 10% in case of Single Premium

A digital-adept organisation that strives towards easing its customers’ lives by offering them innovative online product solutions and customer services, Max Life has deployed an array of customer-facing digital processes that have increased the lead generation and improved response times; apart from creating efficiency in underwriting, claim processing and after-sales service. In addition, with its unique ‘InsurTech’ accelerator programme ‘Max Life Innovation Labs’, Max Life aims to address distinct business challenges and help create a strategic ecosystem geared towards bringing greater innovations to the industry. Under its ambit, the programme invites disruptive startups to create futuristic tech-based solutions for the rapidly advancing life insurance sector. By partnering with mentors like Startup India, AWS, Blume Ventures, Revstart, Venture Garage etc., the programme seeks to open greater mentoring to startups to help refine their business models, offer technology guidance, cloud credits, improve business pitches, early stage investment amongst others.

With a single-minded customer and employee obsession, Max Life is proud to be amongst the top 100 Great Places to Work 2019, and is recognised as among ‘India’s Best Workplaces for Women – 2019’ by Great Place to Work ® Institute. These recognitions underline the organisation’s pursuance of employee excellence, and a focused approach towards creating a diverse and inclusive culture.

Young India’s Key Trigger to Buying Term Insurance

Concern for Children’s Financial Future, Young India’s Key Trigger to Buying Term Insurance

Families with children have the highest term insurance uptake and feel most protected

Millennials with kids far more prudent, 79% save for their kid’s education, reveals ‘India Protection Quotient’ Survey by Max Life Insurance

 Max Life Insurance Company Ltd. (“Max Life” / “Company”) revealed that while young India feels grossly underprepared to face the financial instability caused by eventualities of life, their children’s financial future is the foremost concern that influences them to purchase term insurance.

As per the ‘India Protection Quotient’ survey conducted by Max Life in association with Kantar IMRB, while ‘getting lump sum at a future date for my child’s education’ was a term buying trigger for about 44% urban Indians, at 48% it was the biggest trigger for millennials with kids. 

Aalok Bhan, Director and Chief Marketing Officer, Max Life said: “There are several key milestones in parents’ life that they go through which children’s are growing, right from nurturing values, to a good quality education in the early days and then to supporting their higher education and matrimonial plans. To achieve such milestones without any hassles, it is important to undertake financial planning judiciously. It is reassuring to see that young India understands the need for owning term insurance to secure their family’s future. Birth of child is the biggest trigger for millennials to buy term insurance, which confirms that children continues to be the fulcrum of financial planning for Indian households.”

As compared to the national average of 47%, awareness of term products is a comparatively higher at 50% among millennials with kids. The same is an indicator that the younger generation, who have young kids, have higher awareness of benefits arising from ownership of term insurance and are investing in it to ensure that their children’s aspirations are not compromised even in case of any eventuality.

Millennials with kids prioritize saving for children’s education and marriage over retirement planning

While nearly half of urban Indian millennials in the age group of 25 – 35 years believe in spending more on travel/ luxury and are not even thinking about financially protecting their families, millennials with kids are far more conscious of creating corpus to support life stage goals related to their children. A significant 79% millennials with kids save for their kid’s education while 55% save for their kids’ marriage.

So committed are millennial parents to safeguarding the financial future of their kids, that their retirement planning too takes a backseat. While almost 54% India saves for old age security and retirement, millennials with kids prioritize savings for goals related to their children over their own selves with 50% of them saving for old age security.

Families with children consider term insurance their first preference

The fact that 36% families with children consider term insurance as their first choice when it comes to buying life insurance indicates that millennial parents understand the risks of life and the need to protect against those risks by buying term plan.

At 52%, term insurance awareness among families with children is almost twice as compared to the awareness levels of 29%, among families without children. Consequently, families with children have a higher term insurance ownership of 24%, while only 12% families without children own term insurance. 

Max Life’s InsurTech Accelerator Programme garners over 70 startup applications

‘Max Life Innovation Labs’, Max Life’s InsurTech Accelerator Programme garners over 70 startup applications, strengthens ecosystem partnerships with leading industry mavens

‘Max Life Innovation Labs’ is the life insurer’s flagship accelerator programme designed to engage with the startup ecosystem

Following the successful launch of its unique ‘InsurTech’ accelerator programme ‘Max Life Innovation Labs’, Max Life Insurance Co. Ltd (“Max Life”/ “Company”) is now expanding the programme scope to include distinct business challenges and bringing on board strategic ecosystem partners to provide mentoring and business support to startups.

Building upon keen response from over 70 innovative startups across and beyond the country, Max Life Innovations Labs is now expanding the scope of focus areas to include new challenges including speech recognition, document parsing, alternate to conventional medical tests and integrated financial view for customer. These are aside the earlier identified areas of intelligent data acquisition and processing generated from online/offline sources, customer engagement in health & wellness, customer engagement in personal finance & retirement planning, smart underwriting, intelligent agent/seller hiring, financial management and more. With a vision to maximise innovation, business teams at Max Life have identified additional use cases that will allow the participants to build scalable solutions by leveraging new age technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, internet of things, big data to facilitate greater novelty in the insurance sector.

Under this programme, Max Life is inviting disruptive startups and out of the box thinkers to partner with them in creating futuristic tech-based solutions for Max Life in a rapidly advancing life insurance industry. The selected startups will also get access to ecosystem partners in the program such as Startup India, AWS, Blume Ventures, Revstart, Venture Garage etc. The program partners will be integrated with the startup ecosystem and will bring immense value to selected startups. Program partners will also endeavour to support in mentoring selected startups with refining their business model, technology guidance, cloud credits, improving business pitch, early stage investment amongst others.

Commenting on the accelerator programme, Prashant Tripathy, CEO and Managing Director, Max Life said, “We are excited to widen our call for collaboration to a larger base and look forward to receiving more participation from this promising startup community, who we believe has the potential to build solutions that result in transformation of the country’s life insurance business. Since the launch of the accelerator programme, we have received eager responses from startups which has led us to expand the scope of problem areas and initiate partnerships that shall expand the reach of the programme further.”

Startups can also look forward to receiving a plethora of benefits such as best-in-class mentoring and knowledge workshops from Max Life CXOs, as well as insurance ecosystem leaders and experts. Further, exclusive benefits such as dedicated innovation workspace across top startup hubs, technology and infrastructure support in the form of cloud access, along with data and business APIs. Additionally, the insurer may also partner with them for applying to IRDAI’s Sandbox with relevant solutions.

The final selection of startups will be made on the basis of relevance to the shared focus areas, innovativeness of the solution, its feasibility and availability of appropriate skill set in the startup team.

Application window is open till 17th November where interested startups with innovative solutions to above areas can apply on https://www.maxlifeinsurance-innovationlabs.com/

Max Life’s InsurTech Accelerator Programme garners over 70 startup applications

‘Max Life Innovation Labs’, Max Life’s InsurTech Accelerator Programme garners over 70 startup applications, strengthens ecosystem partnerships with leading industry mavens

‘Max Life Innovation Labs’ is the life insurer’s flagship accelerator programme designed to engage with the startup ecosystem

Following the successful launch of its unique ‘InsurTech’ accelerator programme ‘Max Life Innovation Labs’, Max Life Insurance Co. Ltd (“Max Life”/ “Company”) is now expanding the programme scope to include distinct business challenges and bringing on board strategic ecosystem partners to provide mentoring and business support to startups.

Building upon keen response from over 70 innovative startups across and beyond the country, Max Life Innovations Labs is now expanding the scope of focus areas to include new challenges including speech recognition, document parsing, alternate to conventional medical tests and integrated financial view for customer. These are aside the earlier identified areas of intelligent data acquisition and processing generated from online/offline sources, customer engagement in health & wellness, customer engagement in personal finance & retirement planning, smart underwriting, intelligent agent/seller hiring, financial management and more. With a vision to maximise innovation, business teams at Max Life have identified additional use cases that will allow the participants to build scalable solutions by leveraging new age technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, internet of things, big data to facilitate greater novelty in the insurance sector.

Under this programme, Max Life is inviting disruptive startups and out of the box thinkers to partner with them in creating futuristic tech-based solutions for Max Life in a rapidly advancing life insurance industry. The selected startups will also get access to ecosystem partners in the program such as Startup India, AWS, Blume Ventures, Revstart, Venture Garage etc. The program partners will be integrated with the startup ecosystem and will bring immense value to selected startups. Program partners will also endeavour to support in mentoring selected startups with refining their business model, technology guidance, cloud credits, improving business pitch, early stage investment amongst others.

Commenting on the accelerator programme, Prashant Tripathy, CEO and Managing Director, Max Life said, “We are excited to widen our call for collaboration to a larger base and look forward to receiving more participation from this promising startup community, who we believe has the potential to build solutions that result in transformation of the country’s life insurance business. Since the launch of the accelerator programme, we have received eager responses from startups which has led us to expand the scope of problem areas and initiate partnerships that shall expand the reach of the programme further.”

Startups can also look forward to receiving a plethora of benefits such as best-in-class mentoring and knowledge workshops from Max Life CXOs, as well as insurance ecosystem leaders and experts. Further, exclusive benefits such as dedicated innovation workspace across top startup hubs, technology and infrastructure support in the form of cloud access, along with data and business APIs. Additionally, the insurer may also partner with them for applying to IRDAI’s Sandbox with relevant solutions.

The final selection of startups will be made on the basis of relevance to the shared focus areas, innovativeness of the solution, its feasibility and availability of appropriate skill set in the startup team.

Application window is open till 17th November where interested startups with innovative solutions to above areas can apply on https://www.maxlifeinsurance-innovationlabs.com/