Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Aditya Birla Capital Limited Q2 FY25 earnings call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Vishakha Mulye, CEO, Aditya Birla Capital Limited. Thank you, and over to you.
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the earnings call of Aditya Birla Capital for Q2 of FY2025. Joining me today are senior members of my team: Bala, Rakesh, Tushar, Pankaj, Kamlesh, Mayank, Pinky, Vijay, Ramesh, and Sanchita. I will cover our strategy and business performance, and Vijay will cover key financial highlights, followed by a discussion on the performance of our key businesses by our business CEOs. The Indian economy has remained resilient. We were the fastest-growing economy in Q1, with a GDP growth rate of 6.7%. Manufacturing activity continues to gain ground on the back of improving domestic demand, and the service sector remains buoyant. Improved agricultural activity brightens the prospects of rural consumption. Central banks across the world have started reducing interest rates.
RBI has changed its stance from a withdrawal of accommodation to neutral, while highlighting an upside risk to inflation from food prices and crude oil prices among the global uncertainties. At Aditya Birla Capital, we continue to focus on driving quality and profitable growth by leveraging data, digital, and technology. We follow a customer-centric approach to build a deep understanding of the needs of our customers and provide them simple and holistic financial solutions in a seamless way. This approach has helped us to accelerate our growth trajectory, build scale, and increase market share across our businesses. Prudent risk management practices are the bedrock of our approach, which has enabled us to protect capital and deliver risk-calibrated and sustainable returns across our businesses. We also continue to strengthen our omnichannel distribution network. Coming to the performance highlights for the quarter: growth and profitability.
Consolidated profit after tax, excluding one-off items, grew by 18% year-on-year and 12% sequentially to INR 834 crore in the quarter. The total consolidated revenue grew by 34% year-on-year to INR 11,804 crore. As we had mentioned in our previous calls, we are focused on growing our portfolio with a strong emphasis on return on capital. We have been calibrating our portfolio over the last 12 months proactively. In our NBFC business, we made interventions and tightened underwriting norms in certain segments, such as smaller ticket size unsecured personal and consumer loans, to improve our customer selection. We identified target customer segments, such as SMEs, and increased our focus on growing secured business loans to SMEs. Further, looking at the market opportunities, we have also accelerated the growth of our HFC portfolio.
These steps have helped us in a good step in the current volatile and uncertain environment, with an improvement in the growth of stage two and stage three loans in both our lending businesses while maintaining the growth momentum. Our NBFC portfolio grew by 23% year-on-year and 7% sequentially to about INR 1.15 trillion. The business loans to SMEs grew by 39% year-on-year and 9% sequentially. The corporate and mid-market portfolio grew by 25% year-on-year and 8% sequentially. As we had highlighted earlier, in personal loan businesses, we are focused on increasing our sourcing from direct channels, such as branches and the newly launched ABCD app, and we expect the growth in the personal loans to normalize in the next few quarters. We remain confident in growing the overall NBFC portfolio by a CAGR of 25% over the next two to three years.
The overall growth stage two and three loans in NBFC business declined by about 100 basis points year-on-year and 21 basis points sequentially to 4.24% as of September end. Our credit loss has improved from 1.43% in Q1 to 1.25% in Q2 FY25, which is the best in class in the industry. While our credit quality has held up very well, we remain watchful given the current environment, and we will continue to calibrate our portfolio with a paramount focus on return on capital. The profit after tax of the NBFC business grew by 15% year-on-year to INR 629 crore. The ROA and ROE remain healthy at 2.34% and 15.6%, respectively. In our HFC business, we have built significant capacity over the past few quarters by making investments in digital properties, technology, people, and distribution.
I am delighted to share that we have reached a monthly disbursement run rate of about INR 1,400 crore. This has resulted in our HFC portfolio growing by 51% year-on-year to INR 23,236 crore as of September end. The Indian housing sector continues to offer growth opportunities and is also aided by various government measures, such as the expansion of PMAY and investments in affordable urban housing. We believe the investments which we have made will enable us to capture these opportunities and further accelerate our growth in the HFC portfolio. The credit quality in the HFC portfolio remains lowest, with gross stage 2 and stage 3 loans declining 218 basis points year-on-year and 42 basis points sequentially to 2.22% as of September end. Moving on to asset management business, our mutual fund average AUM grew by 23% year-on-year and 9% sequentially to about INR 3.8 trillion in Q2 of FY25.
We had mentioned earlier that we had taken steps to strengthen our investments and retail sales team and investment processes in FY24. These initiatives have started showing results. We have seen an uptick in the equity fund performance across various categories. Monthly SIP flows increased by 47% year-on-year to about INR 1,425 crore rupees in September. The profit after tax grew by 36% year-on-year to INR 242 crore rupees. Moving on to the insurance businesses, we have seen a strong revival in the growth in our life insurance business. The individual first-year premium grew by 33% year-on-year in H1 FY25, which is significantly higher than the private industry growth. The year-on-year premium growth across the partnership channel was 34%, as compared to 11% in Q1.
We are seeing traction in the mainstream in our new tie-ups in the Bank of Maharashtra and IDFC First Bank, and we are commencing sourcing business at Axis counter as well. We continue to be in the top quartile in the industry in terms of our 13th and 61st month persistency. The new surrender guidelines, which have come into effect from October 1, will impact net VNB margin to a certain extent. To address this and mitigate some of this impact, we have realigned our commission structure in line with most of the industry players and have also initiated changes in the product construct and the product mix. Kamlesh will cover these steps in detail.
We remain confident in growing the individual first-year premium by a CAGR of 20% over the next two to three years, and our endeavor is to maintain a VNB margin of about 17%-18%. In the health insurance business, we continue to be the fastest-growing standalone health insurer. Our gross written premium grew by 39% year-on-year in H1 of FY25, driven by our differentiated health-first model and data-enabled approach towards customer acquisition. Our market share among the SAHIS has increased by about 120 basis points year-on-year to 11.9% in H1 FY25. Omnichannel architecture for distribution. Our omnichannel architecture allows customers to choose the channel of their choice and interact with us seamlessly across digital platforms, branches, and VRMs, fostering engagement and loyalty. Our D2C platform, ABCD, went live in April 2024.
It offers a comprehensive portfolio of more than 20 products and services, such as payments, loans, insurance, investments, and helps customers to fulfill their financial needs. During the quarter, we have introduced new products such as DigiGold, gifting, family health scan, and pocket insurance. ABCD serves as an acquisition engine for us. As we had communicated earlier, we aim to acquire 30 million customers over the next three years. I am delighted to share that ABCD has witnessed a growth response from about 2.5 million customer acquisitions till date. We are seeing a strong traction in payments with more than 1.2 million VPAs created till date.
Our motto behind the design of UI and UX of the app has been everything finance as simple as ABCD, and I am happy to share that ABCD has been awarded the FinTech Solution of the Year under the Best in Class User-Friendly Interface category at Global FinTech Festival 2024. In line with our commitment to enhancing one experience for our customers, we will launch a revamped servicing app in the next three to six months. This app will be built on a modular platform, offering a unified and e-commerce servicing infrastructure across all our businesses. Our comprehensive B2B platform for MSME ecosystem, Udyog Plus, continues to scale up quite well with more than 1.6 million registrations. Udyog Plus has reached an AUM of INR 2,900 crore, and it will now contribute about 25% of the disbursements and total portfolio of the unsecured business loans.
We have further enhanced our integration with the ABG ecosystem to provide credit and supply chain financing solutions to our dealers and vendors. About 45% of the disbursements of Udyog Plus are sourced from ABG ecosystem. We had 1,470 branches across all our businesses as of September end. We are focused on capturing white spaces and driving penetration into tier three and tier four towns and new customer segments. In line with our one-ABC approach, we continue to expand our co-located branches, which increased by 41 during the quarter to 866 branches across 238 locations. Talking about strategic initiatives, our board of directors approved an amalgamation of Aditya Birla Finance with Aditya Birla Capital in March, subject to regulatory and other approvals. We are happy to share that the proposed amalgamation has received no objections from our RBI.
We have made an application before NCLT Ahmedabad and expect the amalgamation to get completed in the next six months. During the quarter, we concluded the sale of our broking insurance subsidiary, and also received all regulatory approvals. Going forward, we will continue with our approach of driving quality and profitable growth. Now, I request Vijay to briefly cover the financial performance of our key subsidiaries for the quarter. Over to you, Vijay.
Thank you, Vishakha, and good evening to all of you. The total consolidated revenue grew by 36% year-on-year to INR 12,007 crore during the quarter. Consolidated PAT grew by 42% year-on-year and 32% sequentially to INR 1,001 crore. The consolidated profit after tax in Q2 of the current quarter includes a one-time gain of INR 167 crore from sale of our entire stake in ABIBL, the insurance broking subsidiary.
In our NBFC business, the loan portfolio grew by 23% year-on-year and 7% sequentially to about INR 1.15 trillion. NIM, including fee income, was 6.28% for the quarter. The credit quality of our NBFC business continues to remain robust, with a credit cost of 1.25% in quarter two. During the quarter, we also infused INR 500 crore equity capital in the NBFC to support the growth momentum. Our housing finance business continues to see strong momentum. The loan portfolio grew by 51% year-on-year to INR 23,236 crore. During Q1 FY25, we further infused equity capital amounting to INR 300 crore in our HFC subsidiary, taking the cumulative infusion during the year to INR 600 crore. This infusion was done to support the growth momentum and maximize our share of opportunities, which Vishakha mentioned earlier.
Coming to our AMC business, the average AUM increased by 9% sequentially and 23% year-on-year to INR 3.8 trillion in the current quarter, of which equity AUM was approximately 47%. Alternate AUM grew by 66% year-on-year to about INR 3,850 crore in Q2 FY25. In the life insurance business, our first-year premium increased by 33% year-on-year, and group new business premium grew by 45% year-on-year in H1. The VNB margin was 7.4% in H1 of FY25. In our health insurance business, our unique and differentiated health-first model helped us to deliver a growth of 39% year-on-year in gross underwritten premium during H1 of FY25. Our combined ratio has improved from 119% in H1 FY24 to about 113% in H1 FY25. I now hand over to Rakesh, MD and CEO ABFL, to cover the NBFC business performance in detail.
Thanks, Vijay, and good evening, everyone.
In our NBFC business, we saw a 23% year-on-year and 7% quarter-on-quarter growth in our AUM, taking it to INR 1,14,710 crore in quarter two. We continue to focus on SME segment, and the business loans to SME grew at a market-leading rate of 39% year-on-year. This segment now comprises 55% of our overall portfolio. A large share of growth in this segment has come from secured loans, which grew by 45% year-on-year. Our disbursement in quarter two was at INR 19,322 crore, which is our highest-ever quarterly disbursement. Disbursements grew 17% year-on-year for the quarter and 10% as compared to H1 of last year. This comes despite the calibration measures in small-ticket personal and consumer loans, which I have spoken about in our earlier earnings call. Disbursement to MSME grew at 27% year-on-year. Secured business loans to SMEs contributed 38% to overall disbursements.
More than 58% of our sourcing in business loans is done via direct channels, and we foresee this to inch upward with continued scale-up of our B2B platform for MSMEs, Udyog Plus. I'm happy to share that we now have more than 1.6 million MSMEs registered on this platform. We are scaling up our direct sourcing model in both our personal and consumer loans and business loans segment, and I'm confident that the growth in these segments will pick up further in the next few quarters. Our effort to tighten our scorecards and credit filters to improve the customer selections over the past few quarters has produced positive outcomes. Our credit cost has improved by 18 basis points quarter-on-quarter to 1.25%, which is well within our stated guidance of 1.5%. However, we continue to calibrate our portfolio, taking into account the current market environment.
We continuously monitor offers exposure of our customers and have carried out policy modifications to filter out customer cohorts with high leverage in our unsecured segment. As we have highlighted in our previous calls, we have taken several steps to calibrate sourcing from digital partners in the smaller-ticket size segment. To improve the quality, apart from leverage filters, we also continue to monitor and, when required, tighten underwriting rules such as number of inquiries, recency of unsecured exposure count, etc. All these measures help us safeguard against any stress that might be getting created owing to extraneous reasons. Our asset quality has shown consistent improvement with stage two plus stage three book reducing by 100 basis points year-on-year to 4.24%. The gross stage three book has declined by 14 basis points year-on-year to 2.5%. Our stage three book is well provided with a PCR of 46%.
PAT for the quarter two registered a strong growth of 15% year-on-year and stood at INR 629 crore. The return on assets for the quarter was 2.34%. The return on equity for the quarter stood at 15.6%. Our net interest margin was at 6.28%, and cost-to-income ratio stood at 31.02% for the quarter. Moving forward, we remain focused on developing a granular portfolio and increasing the mix of business loans to MSMEs. This will be supported by the scale-up of our Udyog Plus platform with new product offerings and increased investment in distribution across emerging regions aimed at driving growth. All digital customer acquisition processes on the ABCD app and Udyog Plus are designed for end-to-end control, covering everything from underwriting to collections, ensuring complete customer ownership.
As we have mentioned in our previous earnings calls, we remain confident to grow the overall portfolio at a CAGR of 25% over the next two to three years. As we scale up, strengthen our capabilities, and invest in technology, our primary commitment remains to deliver sustainable returns in the upcoming quarters. With that, I will now hand over to Pankaj Gadgil, MD and CEO of our housing finance business.
Thank you, Rakesh, and good evening, everyone. I'll now present ABHFL's performance for Q2 FY25. I'm happy to share that we have achieved our highest-ever disbursement for five consecutive quarters now, driven by investments in digital and distribution. Business from the ABCD ABG ecosystem has consistently contributed 9%-10% of disbursements over the last four quarters, and we've consistently upheld strong performance in both portfolio and onboarding quality. The key highlights for Q2 FY25 are as follows.
We recorded our highest-ever quarterly disbursement of 4,010 crores, which is an increase of 113% YOY and 31% QOQ. Our AUM as of September 24 stands at 23,236 crores, an increase of 51% YOY and 14% QOQ. Our customer base is now at 75,300 customers and has grown by 29% YOY, with the average ticket size of retail segment at 27 lakhs. We also recorded the highest-ever PBT of 104 crores, which is an increase of 7% YOY and 22% QOQ. Net interest margin to average loan book is 5.24%. Stage two and three has reduced to 2.22%, which is a reduction of 218 basis points YOY and 42 basis points QOQ. ROA for the quarter is 1.53%, and ROE is at 11.54%. For more detailed financial information, please refer to slide 26 of the presentation.
I would now like to provide you a brief update on the few pillars of our growth. First, on portfolio quality, with a focus on quality of origination, 95% of our disbursements in Q2 FY25 remain directed towards 700-plus CIBIL or new-to-credit. Gross NPA has reduced both in absolute and percentage terms, which is at 1.3% in Q2 FY25, the lowest level in the past 12-plus quarters. As we are building our portfolio, we have increased our stage three provision coverage to 40.9%. This has resulted in a credit cost of 24 basis points in this quarter, and we expect our credit cost to normalize at the current level. For more details on portfolio quality, please refer to slide 24 of the presentation. On our second pillar, which is distribution, we now operate from 150 branches across 18 states. Our sales CRM has enabled last-mile planning, leading to increased efficiency.
The contribution of ABG ecosystem for Q2 FY25 is at 9.2% of our disbursements. Moving to third pillar, digital reinvention, FinVerse's unified digital lending platform continues to see 100% adoption. With FinVerse, we are also now onboarding our channel partners instantly, and it's encouraging to see positive adoption rates among them as well. Lastly, on data and analytics, we have successfully deployed various models till date, spanning across the customer journey from demand generation to collections. Our pre-delinquency model and flow prediction model have played an important role in improving portfolio quality, resulting in a 218 basis points YOY reduction in stage two plus stage three as compared to September 2023. Going forward, our growth momentum will be driven by evolving opportunities within the housing finance sector, and this growth will be enabled by robust digital platforms, penetration led by ABCD ABG ecosystem, strong analytics, and effective portfolio management.
Thank you for your attention. With that, I'll now hand over to Bala, MD and CEO of our asset management company.
Thank you, Pankaj, and good evening to everyone. I'd like to share the highlights of ABSL AMC Q2 performance. The ABSL AMC, our overall average asset management, including alternate assets, reached 4 lakh crore, reflecting 25% year-on-year growth. Our mutual fund quarterly average AUM reached 380,000 crore, growing by 23% year-on-year. The quarterly equity average assets stood at 181,000 crore, growing by 39% year-on-year. The SIP book during the quarter crossed 1,400 crore, a 47% year-on-year increase from 968 crore in September 2023 to 1,428 crore in September 2024. We also added about 11.55 lakh new SIPs, a 5% increase compared to the previous year. I'm happy to share that the overall investor portfolio has crossed 1 crore, with about 19 lakh new folios added during the quarter.
I'd also like to mention that the strong investment performance supported by the increased level of engagement at the ground level is helping us narrow the dip in the market share on the quarter-on-quarter basis. This has, in fact, created a positive perception among our distribution partners and investors at large, leading to an increase in the overall net promoter score. As we have been highlighting about our commitment to building our alternative assets and passive business, we are making good progress on this segment. Our PMS and AIF assets grew by 66% from INR 2,300 crore to INR 3,900 crore. Our offshore assets grew by 31% from INR 9,500 crore to INR 12,500 crore. We did have some inflows in the offshore asset management this year, mid-quarter as it. Our GIFT operation, the gateway for inbound and outbound remittance, has also gathered momentum.
We are currently raising funds from Global Emerging Market Equity Funds and India ESG Engagement Fund. We also have ABSL Flexi Cap Fund for ABSL Bluechip Funds in pipeline. On the credit front, we have launched the ABSL Structured Opportunities Credit Fund under the AIF to create our presence in the private credit market. On the passive front, as of September 2024, our assets are approximately INR 37 crore. Our customer base has grown by about 9.5 lakh folios. We also have a diverse product portfolio of over 47 products. I'm also happy to share that during the quarter, we also won ESIC mandate under the advisory route and documentation under progress. With respect to the financials, our total revenue is about INR 520 crore, which is INR 391 crore of the same period last year, grew by 33%.
Our profit after tax is about 242 crore, which is 178 crore for the same period last year, 33% year-on-year growth. For the first half of FY25, our total revenue is about 1,001 crore, up by 28% year-on-year. Profit after tax is about 478 crore, up by 32% year-on-year. With this, I'll hand it over to Kamlesh Rao, MD and CEO of our insurance business.
Thank you, Bala. I will now do some highlights of the life insurance business performance for the first half of the year. The overall life insurance industry saw an upsurge in H1 of financial year 25. Individual first-year premium for the overall industry grew by 21%, and for the private players, by 24%. For ABSLI, during the same period, it was at 33%, with healthy growth across both proprietary as well as our partnership channels.
Our new business policies have grown by 27% in the first half of the year. For the very good second quarter for ABSLI, it's 19% growth in Q1, ended in a 33% growth for the first half of the year. For ABSLI, the proprietary channel saw an overshoot of 30%, and our direct business grew by 69% over last year in the first half of this year. Like Vishakha mentioned, our new tie-ups in Bank of Maharashtra and IDFC Bank saw us gain mindshare in the first six months of launch, and business has now started at the Axis Bank counter too. These, combined with our existing bank partners, saw growth of 34% in H1 for ABSLI. In the group life insurance segment, the private industry grew by 2%, overall industry by 20%, and ABSLI registered a growth of 45% in the first half of this year.
Better growth was contributed by superior performance, both in the fund as well as the credit-like business. Our group business AUM has now crossed INR 25,000 crore as of September and contributes to 25% of the overall ABSLI AUM. Our total premium for the period of INR 8,657 crore has registered a growth of 27% over last year's same period, with a two-year CAGR now of 17%. This growth came from new business as well as renewal premium growing at 12%. Our digital collections now account for 81% of our renewal premium. We continue to work on customer lifetime value, which is reflected in our upsell ratio, which touched 29%, and real productivity growth, both in our proprietary as well as partnership channels. In the product mix for the individual business, traditional business, including protection, contributed 64%, and ULIP was at 36%.
This increasing trend in sale of ULIP business has continued into this quarter for the industry as well as for ABSLI. We launched a new ULIP product called Param Suraksha, which was a combination of ULIP with inbuilt higher protection as well as critical illness riders, which was a big success in our bancassurance. We grew our ULIP mix with a combination of products to garner higher mindshare at some of our large counters, which worked successfully. Having achieved this, our outlook in the second half of the year is to optimize ULIP mix to ensure sustainable value and growth. Some drop in margins was planned for in the first half, and we have a plan to get in place our projected net margins for the year. Our quality parameters continue to trend better across various areas.
Persistency across all buckets did well, with 13 months now at 88% and the 61st month at 67%, which will make a top quartile in the industry. Our consistent efforts on bringing cost efficiency to the business have resulted in OPEX to premium being fairly consistent at 20.6 versus 20.2 last year's season. Our assets under management now stand at INR 95,553 crore, with a YOI growth of 24%. 25% of this AUM is in equity, and the balance 75% in debt. We continue to outperform in our investment performance in respective benchmarks across all three categories of equity, debt, or even balanced funds, either from a one-year or a five-year perspective. Our digital adoption across various areas is demonstrated in slide 42. 100% of our new business customers are onboarded digitally. 83% of all our services now is available digitally, covering about 67% of our customer transactions.
Our customer service sales service ratio now stands at 94%. As we move ahead, we will continue to be best in class in our digital infrastructure across prospecting and onboarding in sales, underwriting, as well as customer service and claims. Based on the new surrender regulations, as we called out last quarter, we do expect some impact on our margins. Approach on realignment of commission structures, like Vishakha mentioned, has been finalized for the distributor. We have also initiated changes in product constructs in terms of customer benefits to ensure this impact is mitigated. We have relaunched major top-selling products in compliance with the new surrender regulations in October, as desired by the regulator. No adverse impact is expected on new business on account of this.
We also raised sub-debt of INR 550 crore in Q2 to support our growth aspirations, and our solvency continues to remain at a healthy rate of 188%. The H1 focused on beefing up distribution by increasing capacity in our proprietary channels, covering both agency as well as our direct business. We invested in capacity in our newly acquired bank partners, which helped us garner incremental mindshare. With this, we have a reasonable groundwork set for penetrating in H2, and we have an opportunity to get triple-digit premiums in the next 12 months in some of these counters. All this has resulted in VNB margins of H1 at 7.4%, given the upfront investments into channels, as well as our planned higher ULIP sales. Focus on H2 will be on moderating ULIP and higher productivity on investments than in H1.
For the full year, we are estimating the same to be at projected guidance levels of 17%-18%. On the back of strong growth and quality of our book, we are now reporting an embedded value of INR 12,368 crore with a growth of 21% over September of last year. With this, I'll hand over to Mayank, MD and CEO of our health insurance. Thank you, Kamlesh, and let me now share the overview of our performance of our health insurance business. We had a very strong quarter two, and we continue to build on the growth momentum that we built in Q1 of this financial year. Our Q2 growth accelerated to 43% versus 35% that we experienced in Q1. We achieved a gross premium of INR 2,171 crore with a strong 39% YOY growth in the first half of the year.
The growth is significantly higher compared to the health growth of 25%, and thus further strengthening our position as a fastest-growing health player. I'm sorry to interrupt. Our market share in health has increased from 10.7% to 11.9%, a YOY increase of 123 basis points. The growth continues to be driven by our retail franchise, diversified across all major distribution channels. The proprietary channel with an advisor count of over 1.25 lakh agents has experienced a 38% YOY growth. All our major bank and digital alliance partnerships have also experienced impressive growth, leading to our retail franchise growing at 51% in H1. Our flagship product, Activ One, launched late last year, continues to be the most comprehensive indemnity product in the industry.
The product position under the theme "100% health, 100% health insurance" continues to be exceptionally well received by the market, helping us penetrate into newer customer segments, including the under-penetrated HNI segment and the segment comprising of people with existing chronic conditions. Our recently introduced category-defining maternity product aimed at expected parents has been received well in the market. We've also collaborated with India's leading wearable device manufacturer to introduce a product integrating wearable-based health tracking to promote proactive health behavior, but more importantly, to get access to a very large base of young and healthy customers. The corporate business experiences strategically controlled 27% YOY growth, driven by a sharp focus on profitability with careful customer segmentation, cross-sell, and upsell strategies, and also industry-leading corporate benefits.
We are strategically concentrating on mid-corporate and SME segments to continue to build one of the very few sustainable and profitable corporate businesses in the industry. By prioritizing both growth but also profitability, we are building a resilient franchise. Our net loss improved to 115 crore in H1 compared to 140 in the same period last year. Thus, the combined ratio also improved to 113% from 119% in the previous year. Importantly, both our claims and expense ratios have trended positively at the company level, and we will continue to maintain a positive outlook as we work towards meeting EOM guidelines in the next financial year. Our Health First model continues to scale and mature and show visible improvements in both consumer engagement and therefore financial outcomes for the company. Our scale, which we have to assess and provide us with valuable insights for customers' health.
The percentage of customer influence by participating in our healthy behavior has now increased to 33% of the enlarged customer base. These customers continue to exhibit lower loss ratios ranging from 20%-40% at various cohort levels. Likewise, customers earning health behavior-based incentives also experience loss ratios up to 34% lower than the baseline case. This is shown in slide 53. We've also invested in building deep capabilities in managing customers with high health risk, which happens because of the aging of the input portfolio. We've created a combination of first-of-its-kind product offering and also human-strong digital capacities to manage the disease burden of these set of customers. The customer-to-customer engagement capabilities and insights are disclosed in slide 54.
Through a combination of our in-house health coaches and our partners, we've intervened in more than 120,000 high-risk clients to improve their health vitals, leading to lower claim ratios, thus removing a challenge that most of the vintage health insurance companies are facing in the market today. Our promise of insurance is centered on providing industry-leading experience. Investment in state-of-the-art AI and ML-driven claims auto adjudication engine witnessed very encouraging results. This will further enhance customer satisfaction and, at the same time, enable claims cost management more effectively. The industry-leading Activ One app has been relaunched with multiple premium services. The app now provides opportunity for non-policy holders to experience our comprehensive app ecosystem. Our YOY app downloads have increased by 95%, with YOY monthly active users increasing by 88%. Therefore, overall looking ahead, we remain optimistic about the growth prospects of the health insurance sector.
The recent regulatory changes, including the current changes, are laying the foundation for a more transparent and robust industry, and we believe we have positioned well to capture the future growth opportunities. Thank you, and now I'll hand it back to Vishakha for her closing comments.
Thank you so much, and we're very happy to take it if there are any questions.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. We'll take a first question from the line of Puneet Balani from Macquarie Capital. Please go ahead. Hi.
Thank you for taking my question.
Sorry, can you use your handset phone? Your volume is very low. Mr. Balani?
Am I audible now?
Please go ahead.
Yeah. So your PCR has declined, while your credit costs have also declined. PCR has declined, and especially when I look at secured segments, they are close to 30% now. So what's the reason here? Any guidance here like you are comfortable with these levels? And second is, on earlier stage two, I said GS2 declined, but has your stage two coverage also declined? Just on that. Yeah. That's it from my side. So Puneet, if you look at our secured book has grown from 67%-74%. So now, of the total loan book, 74% of our loans are secured by real estate collateral or listed security.
So that is the reason why the PCR, because this follows an ECL model, and that is the reason why the PCR has dropped marginally, because the change in the product mix. And there is no decline in terms of stage two provisioning.
Correct.
So we can expect these levels to continue, right, once you're growing the secured book as well? So we can expect the PCR levels around these to continue.
Yes. Depending on the product mix and the ECL model is what our provisioning will be.
Okay. Okay. Got it. Thank you so much.
Yeah.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, please press star and one on your phone. Next question is from the line of Avinash Singh from Emkay Global. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening. Thanks for the opportunity. Again, on this PCR, I mean.
Mr. Avinash Singh, please use your handset mode.
Is it better now?
Are you on your handset now?
Yeah, yeah.
Okay. Please go ahead. Yeah. So again, on PCR, I mean, if you see the movement, I mean, again, the two businesses, the housing finance and your Aditya Birla Finance. On one hand, Aditya Birla Finance stage three PCR has been taken down to 30%. I mean, overall PCR down to 46%, particularly sharp drop in secured, where, of course, there is no sort of changes or there are no government guarantee schemes. But on the housing finance side, you are taking it higher to close to 40%. I mean, that's secured. So what is sort of, I mean, the change that your ECL model is showing just in that quarter, but there is kind of a divergent move, particularly if we compare secured with secured.
So I mean, housing going to 40%, whereas I mean, in the secured piece of NBFC, it's going to 31%. So it's a bit of a, I mean, divergent move. And NBFC also related, that loan book acquired in the quarter still remains outstanding, I mean, close to INR 11 billion or so. So when you are tightening your credit filter, I mean, what kind of a comfort you have typically, if I understand, you will typically assemble loan books with a kind of a 12-month or holding period. So what's the comfort you have on this acquired book? That's it.
So Avinash, your first question was on the provision cover in the NBFC. I will address that, and maybe Pankaj can add on the housing one. The reason in NBFC, what happens is, what is the security?
We have EAD exposure at default into LGD loss given default, which is based over the last 5, 10 years of our recovery rates on the security. So it depends on what is the security cover I have, and that is the basis on which the provision is created. So if my security cover is 2X or 2.25X, the provision will be lower because the LGD will be lower. So that's the logic with which, yes, both of the businesses are secured, but on one side, in the housing, the LGD might be different, different customer segments. Pankaj can add there. But in the NBFC one, it all depends on what is the security cover which we have. So that's the reason why the PCR or the ECL will change. Your second question was on the acquired portfolio.
So on the acquired portfolio, if you look at it, last quarter, we have acquired the securitization closer to INR 1,107 crores. That's what, if you look at, out of the INR 19,000 crores of the disbursement which we would have done for the quarter, INR 1,107 crores is. And if you look at sequentially, it has come down significantly from quarter one. It's almost 50%.
Yeah. Avinash, Pankaj, I think the question is on the higher provisioning coverage ratio on housing, which has gone to 40.94% from 34.55%, which was there in quarter one. So here, first, I would want to say that if you look at the stage two, stage three, it is a true reflection of the portfolio. And in stage three, you would have seen from INR 315 crores, you have come down to INR 288 crores here. So that is one side of the story.
The second side of the story is that while we use the ECL methodology, obviously, we keep looking at each and every account, and we also look at the aging of the account and also the probabilities of recovery from time to time. When we looked at specific accounts, we felt that in some of the accounts that we have, the probabilities could be slightly higher there, and that is where we have taken that higher coverage. That is the philosophy there. I think it is very range-bound. If you look at the entire HFC industry, the PCRs range from between 25%-50% as well. I think it is very range-bound. We are at 40%, and it's not only the stage three, but we keep looking at the accounts also individually to look at the provisioning coverage issues. If I can just have one follow-up.
Sorry, one more question. That on life insurance, I mean, first half, VNB margin 7%. You are hoping the margin uplift of 10% by the year end. Now, if I see this kind of a margin uplift had happened in April 2023, then the equation was different. That you had a kind of a strong sales of that non-par product in the month of March 2023. But here, if we look this time, your ULIP continues to remain flavor of the season, and in H2, the new product or the new surrender regulation also comes into picture. Now, what is it that, I mean, you are still hopeful of taking up margin from 7% to 17%? Because it has not happened last year. It has not happened earlier in 2022. It has only happened in 2023, and there was a particular reason.
This time, the reason is just the other way. That if at all, there could be some negative impact on the new surrender regulation. So what is giving you the confidence that the margin can go up by 10% in the second half?
If you look at the last two or three years' time, I think you validly raised the point saying that in one year, there was an uptick also on account of the new regulation setting in. But prior to that, you would have instances of ABSLI would be in the range-bound margin of 7%-8%, and we have gone even actually to 23% in that year. But a fair point made that ULIP is on the growth angle. But like I said, all the new products that are getting launched in the second half of the year are non-ULIP products.
Protection, we have launched a suite of two new products, which actually happened in the month of September. So that will flow into the second half of the year significantly better. Typically, the margins which accrue from our agency business is significantly higher. And between the first half of the year and the second half of the year, the investment in capacity that we have done in the agency business has been about 40%-50% more. It takes time for that to fructify, which will happen in the second half of the year. So all of this would combine, and of course, like you rightly said, the ULIP business will need to get moderated as compared to the ULIP business that happened in the second quarter.
We actually did that as part of a strategy because in some of our large bank counters, we wanted to garner additional mind share. Normally, when you get additional mind share in a bank counter, when you substitute your products, your mind share typically remains the same, but you get your combination of suite of products. That's the strategy that we have played. That's the reason why you see significantly larger growth rate in the second quarter. We want to use whatever we have created with the combination of products that we will launch in the second half of the year.
Like I said, in agency, which will see traction in the second half of the year more than in the first half, is where the uptake of the margin is expected from 7.5% levels to about 17%-18% that we are projecting for the end of the year.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Subramanian Iyer from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. I just had one data point question. Can I get the total ECL for the NBFC for both the quarters?
So we can share that. I don't have it readily available. I can share that offline.
Okay. Thank you. All the best.
Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Mayank Mistry from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. And congrats on a good set of numbers.
So my question is on the housing business. Actually, when we see from the March quarter, we have grown at 26%. So what is our AUM guidance over there? And second, also, there had been announcements; there had been concerns on aggressive lending in the housing space by RBI recently. So has there been any communication with the regulator as such?
Yes. I think, Pankaj, the growth has been very consistent if you see over the last six quarters. And like you rightly said, the growth is now 51%, YoY 14% for the quarter. So I think, like we've said earlier, the focus is on building the book in the next 18-24 months. That has been the guidance that we've been giving. Because this is coming on the back of the huge opportunity that the industry has.
I think the investments that we've made on digital platforms and also distribution has also the ABCD cluster would have seen the contribution of the business coming in from the ABCD cluster also helping us in garnering shares. The growth is coming across all the segments, which is the affordable, informal, the prime business, as well as the CF business. So guidance is that on that side. Particularly, we have not received any such indication from the regulator on aggressive housing loan growth, etc. But there have been in the past, of course, on top of the investor stand point. Just to also mention that this growth that we have done over the last six quarters, I think we would be one of the very few companies which also speaks about our onboarding quality consistently.
You would have noticed that 95% of our sourcing today, which is happening, is in the top quartile of borrowers and also due to credit. That is clearly showing also in the stage two and stage three. Both in absolute numbers as well as in percentages. At all points of time, we've been speaking about the portfolio quality in consonance with the growth that we have actually had. Sure, sir. Do we have any number on the growth that we are targeting? Yeah. I just mentioned that. I just said that we've been speaking about growing the book and doubling the book in the next 18-24 months, and that kind of stays on course. Like I mentioned in the transcript also, we keep looking at the risk-reward opportunity which exists in the sector.
And appropriately, we look at leveraging the sector in the next quarter.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Chintan Shah from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity and congratulations on a good set of numbers. So firstly, on the capital allocation, so when we have after the latest fundraise of roughly INR 3,000 crores, which we have completed, so how much of that has been allocated to NBFC and HFC?
Chintan, out of the total, we raised about INR 3,000 crores of capital in June 2023. And after that, we also got about INR 570 crores of capital from the AMC OFS during March and June of this calendar year. And about INR 167 crores recently from the ABIBL stake sale.
So far, we have invested close to about INR 2,100 crores in the NBFC and about INR 600 crores in the housing finance business. Okay. Okay. And how much of that would be into the digital arm? Sorry? How much of this would have gone into the digital arm, digital company? As we had mentioned during March, till March, we had spent about INR 100 crores. And we would have additionally spent about INR 50-75 crore during the year in the digital proposition. Sure. That is very clear now. And so on the unsecured piece, I think this quarter we have done in the NBFC business, for the unsecured lending, we have seen some growth coming up in the QOQ disbursement. So I think last quarter, we had mentioned that we would be changing. We are working on better sourcing it via internally and refraining from any external sourcing.
So how does it go now? Is it entirely internal sourcing for the unsecured, and have we tightened the filters, or how is it given that the current environment, unsecured, probably is not the flavor of the town right now?
Yeah. So I covered this in my opening script and covered that we have tightened underwritings, whatever cohorts, which was showing any performance which was not in line. So we have tightened it across in terms of underwriting in different cohorts. So that has been done. In terms of demand, we have built our acquisition channel now. So if you see, majority of our loans are coming through our direct acquisition channel, which is the digital journeys which we have built internally. Also, the branches, the branches which we have built over the last two, three years have started yielding results. So that also is helping us in.
So majority of our disbursement in personal and consumer loan is coming through. Yes, some bit will be coming through DSA, which is part of our branch.
Okay. Sure.
No, I wanted to understand this because in the last quarter also, we had seen a steep decline in the disbursement. And this quarter, despite the environment, disbursements have been quite strong. So anything which has changed very much the cohorts and the tightening of the filters, that has happened in this quarter itself, or how is it?
Both of them. Tightening has been happening over the last three quarters or three, four quarters, if you look at. And that's the reason the disbursement has been coming down from we used to do close to INR 5,000-INR 5,500 crores of disbursement that came down to INR 2,000. And so it's been coming down.
We have been tightening our underwriting norms over the last three to four quarters. And all the branch-led disbursements and our own digital journey, the ABCD app through which we acquire customers, those are the things which are growing at this point in time.
Sure. Sure. And just our last question, if I may ask, on the housing finance, I think Sir mentioned here we have seen certain accounts where probably there are some signs of stress, and that's why we have increased the higher provisions. So under what segments these accounts would cater into? Affordable or prime? And given that we already have the security, then probably why would we be so I would probably say concerned on the asset quality on front for these accounts? Yeah.
The quantum is very minimal. We're talking about 8-9 crores in overall. That's how the PCR has changed broadly.
Like I said, this is we keep doing at all points of time, all those securities there, LGDs we keep measuring. What would be the LGDs that we will be getting on some of these assets? I would just mention that it is spread across all the three segments, but the quantum itself is very, very small.
Sure. I think the total, so if we could just give the total provisions on the HFC book for this quarter and the last quarter, I think that data is not handy. If you could share that with me as well, that would be helpful. Yeah.
Provision was six. Now it is 12.
Sorry?
The provision was six crores earlier. This is now 12 for this quarter. That is the incremental which is there.
And on PCR anyways, if you want to know on the PCR as well, then we can share that with you subsequently as well.
Basically, ECL provisions, entire ECL provisions on the book for the HFC business. So how much has that increased probably QOQ?
6 and 12. 6 crores was the credit cost for quarter one and 12 crores was the credit cost for quarter two.
Okay. Sure. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. That's it from my side. And all the best. Thank you.
Thank you. We have a next question from the line of Kishore Agrawal from Bajaj Finserv AMC. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thank you for the opportunity and congratulations on a good quarter. I have two questions. One on the margins on the NBFC side. We have seen the second quarter of sequential decline in margins.
So is it primarily because of the increase in secured mix, and where do you see the margins settling? And my second question is on asset quality. Do you think that this improvement in asset quality can continue even in the second half? What's Kishore?
Yeah. So margins, if you look at, that's on the backdrop of change in the product mix. Our secured business going up from 67% to 74%. And also on the other side, the unsecured business declining or degrowing from 20-odd% to 14%. So that's the reason because of the change in the product mix why the margins have come down.
As I mentioned in the earlier reply, we are building our own acquisition channels, and we want to build up the personal consumer segment through our own channels, which is what and also the MSME, small ticket MSME loans, the business loans, which we call it. I think these two things should be able to offset the yield compression which is happening on account of the secured business growth. But it might take a quarter or two because I think the shift will have to because the product mix is still in terms of also looking at the environment. If you have the small ticket loans in unsecured, we have completely stopped doing it. Less than INR 50,000 unsecured loans, we are not doing it. We have tightened up all underwriting norms. So that's the reason why the margins have.
But once that starts picking up and also our business loans pick up on our B2B Udyog Plus platform, we should be able to mitigate the margin. Yeah. And to your second question in terms of whether we will be able to sustain the asset quality and the ECL, yes, it will be range-bound. Our guidance has been that the credit cost will be around 1.5%. We have come down to 1.25%. We expect it to be in the same range, and we don't see this going up.
Thank you. Mr. Agarwal, are you through with your question?
Yes. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, I would now like to hand the conference over to Ms. Vishakha Mulye for closing comments. Over to you.
So thank you so much for all of you to join us today evening, and very happy Diwali to all of you and your family.
Thank you. Thank you. On behalf of Aditya Birla Capital, that concludes this conference.
Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.