Post listing, ICICI Lombard eyes on becoming profitable

Mumbai: Country's largest private sector non-life insurer ICICI Lombard, which debuted on the exchanges on Wednesday with a marginal discount to issue price, expects to turn profitable in the near future as it hopes to plug its combined ratio to around 100 percent.

The company was listed at a marginal discount at Rs 646-655 as against the issue price of Rs 661.

ICICI Lombard had fixed the price band at Rs 651-661 per share for the Rs 5,700-crore IPO that was oversubscribed 2.97 times.

ICICI Lombard was a joint venture between ICICI Bank and Canadian NRI Prem Watsa-promoted Fairfax Financial Holdings, formed in 2000.

It was dissolved just before the IPO.

The company is looking at making its operations profitable by bringing down its combined ratio, which is calculated by taking the sum of incurred losses and expenses and then dividing them by earned premium, to around 100 percent in near future.

"Our combined ratio has come down to 102 percent at end-June from 104 percent as on end-March and we will try to bring it further down close to 100 percent in days to come so as to make the company profitable in near future," ICICI Lombard managing director and chief executive, Bhargav Dasgupta told PTI after the listing ceremony here on Wednesday.

Even as Fairfax brought down its stake to 9.9 percent in ICICI Lombard, resulting in stepping down of its representative from the board, ICICI Lombard will continue to have 'Lombard' as its brand name for quite some more time.

"Even though Fairfax has become a minority stakeholder in the company now by bringing down its stake to less than 10 percent in ICICI Lombard, the brand name 'Lombard' has been transferred to us. Hence, we will continue to have it for some time before we take any further call on the issue," Dasgupta said.

To a query, if ICICI Lombard would allow Fairfax, which owns 49 percent of stake in the recently launched non-life firm, Go Digital, he said, "we have no issues."

Talking about consolidation in the industry, he said there is more scope for consolidation as lots of changes are happening in the industry.

The company has been valued at Rs 30,000 crore and it closed the June quarter with a net profit at Rs 200 crore, up by 50 percent on y-o-y basis.