Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Q1 FY23 earnings conference call of Aditya Birla Capital Limited. 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 touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Vishakha Mulye, CEO, Aditya Birla Capital. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.
Thank you. Good evening and welcome to the earnings call for Aditya Birla Capital for the quarter ended June 30, 2022. I'm pleased to present the business performance and the financial results for Q1 FY 2023, and I'm joined by my senior members of the team. Together we will present the results and take any questions you might have. I've taken office as the Chief Executive Officer of Aditya Birla Capital Limited with effect from July 1, 2022. I'm delighted to be a part of ABCL, a company that is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the opportunities in the financial services sector in India. Before coming to our performance this quarter, I would like to mention that the Indian economy has started on a good note in Q1 FY 2023.
This has led by a recovery in the demand to a pre-pandemic level, which in turn has driven industrial activity and service sector. This is reflected in the service sector PMI at 59.2 and our GST collections at an all-time high of INR 1.44 trillion in June 2022. However, the overall macroeconomic environment has seen headwinds emerge over the past few months led by inflationary pressures and a slowdown in the global economy. Though continued concerns remain due to these headwinds, for FY 2023, the Indian economy is expected to grow at about 7%, driven by the domestic demand. This growth rate would put India as the fastest growing economy in the world. This will create great opportunities in the Indian market. We at ABC believe that we are well-positioned to leverage on these opportunities.
Now, I'm pleased to report that Aditya Birla Capital has delivered a strong quarter with INR 429 crore of consolidated profit after tax, a 42% year-on-year increase driven by the growth across our platform. Let me quickly summarize the three highlights of our performance this quarter. In our lending businesses, the overall loan book grew at 22% year-on-year to close at about INR 70,000 crore. The insurance business gross written premium grew by 53% year-on-year to reach INR 3,250 crore. With INR 3.6 lakh crore of aggregate assets under management across our platform, we are one of the largest fund managers in the country today. Our active customer base has now reached 39 million customers, reflecting a significant 55% year-on-year growth.
I'm also happy to state that with this performance, we are on track to deliver ahead of our previously stated FY 2024 targets. Our focus on customer acquisition, retailization of portfolio, new products and customer segments as well as greater penetration in existing customers to enhance our market share by leveraging technology and data analytics has enabled us to deliver both growth and greater profitability across our platform. We have added about four million active customers in this quarter through our continued and sharp focus on our customer acquisition, both through our expansion in our branch network and our digital ecosystem strategy. Our physical footprint has now reached almost 1,100 branches, driving our presence in every town in India with a population of at least three lakhs.
Our branch expansion is targeted at driving penetration into tier three and tier four locations and new customer segments. In addition, we have continued to drive our common One ABC branch rollout with over 113 co-located branches now operational. In addition to expanding our physical footprint, we have also added new and customized products to augment our product suite. To give a few examples, in this quarter we launched a co-branded credit card with SBI Cards in our lending business, a fixed maturity product in our life insurance business, and OPD product in our health insurance business. We will continue to drive new product solutions to serve the needs of our existing customers as we expand our target customer segments. We continue our focus on providing better customer experience through seamless customer journeys, onboarding and personalized solutions through digital offerings.
For example, over 96% of our customers were onboarded digitally. This quarter, we had over 10 million customer interactions on our digital channel and 87% of our insurance policies were renewed digitally. We leveraged our analytics capabilities to increase the share of our wallet with our customers. In this quarter, 35% of our life insurance individual FYT and 20% of our health insurance retail fresh premium was driven by data analytics-led upsell and cross-sell initiatives. Let me now give you a brief summary of our business-wide performance. Let me start with our NBFC business. The outstanding loan book as on 30th June 2022 has increased by 26% year-on-year and 5% quarter-on-quarter. Within that, the retail and SME loans grew by 39%.
Retail and SME constitute now 64% of our loans as on 30th June 2022, as against 56% a year ago. The improved mix has driven NIM expansion by 33 basis points year-on-year to about 6.5% this quarter. The quarterly PAT for ABFL has increased by 43% year-on-year to INR 335 crore, and ROA has increased by 46 basis points to 2.5% from 2% as on 30th June 2021. In the housing finance business, we continue our focus on the affordable housing segment. The outstanding affordable loans as on June 30th, 2022 grew 45% year-on-year. The NIM expanded by 59 basis points year-on-year to about 4.6%. The PAT has increased by 45% year-on-year to INR 56 crore.
ROA for us as on June 30, 2022 was at 1.9%. Now let's talk about our mutual fund business. The average AUM in our AMC business has grown by 2% year-on-year. However, within that, our equity AUM has grown by 14% during the same period. The overall equity mix has grown from 37% to 41% as on June 30, 2022. Despite the challenging market, this business has maintained its operating PBT at INR 172 crore. However, the market volatility and the interest rate environment has impacted the overall profitability for this business. Taking into consideration the mark-to-market impact, the PAT for us for this business was INR 103 crore for Q1 FY23.
The growth momentum in our life insurance business continues with 26% year-on-year growth in retail portfolio premiums and about 2x growth in our group businesses. The total premium in our business grew 49% year-on-year to reach over INR 2,600 crores. We also continue to see the profitability profile of this business improving, and we are well on track to deliver the 17%-18% net VNB margin this fiscal year. In our health insurance business, our unique and differentiated model helped us to deliver industry-leading growth of over 70% this quarter on a year-on-year basis. ABHI was the fastest-growing health insurance player in Q1 FY 2023. With an increase in the market share of about 300 basis points, our overall market share is now 12%. I will now talk about our key focus areas going forward.
One, we intend to leverage the momentum we have seen across other business to accelerate our growth strategy and continue to build scale and drive market share in each of our key businesses. We will continue to focus on quality and profitable growth. Number two, continue our regionalization strategy by driving customer acquisition by building our direct channel partner ecosystem, as well as by increasing penetration into new markets and customer segments. Our branch expansion will be primarily driven by increasing the footprint of our lending and health insurance branch network, as well as the co-located One ABC branches. Number three, drive steady increase in digital adoption across our platform. Investments in leading edge technology, analytics and digitization is central to our approach. We will focus on integrating and adopting new technologies to improve customer experience and new customer acquisition.
Number four, focus on extended ABG and ABCL ecosystems to accelerate our growth. We will focus on building specific and unique propositions, including products and customer journeys for stakeholders within these ecosystems such as suppliers, distributors and employers. With that, I will now hand over the call to Rakesh to take us through our lending business performance.
Thanks, Vishakha, and good evening, everyone. I will now walk you through the performance of our lending businesses, starting with NBFC and then housing. In our NBFC business, we had a strong start to the financial year. Our loan book grew 5% quarter-on-quarter and 26% year-on-year to INR 57,839 crore, with our NIMs reaching another all-time high of 6.5%. This was also aided by strong growth in our retail segment book, which grew 80% year-on-year and 15% quarter-on-quarter to INR 20,249 crore. Quarter one assets grew 43% year-on-year and 14% quarter-on-quarter, delivering an ROA of 2.5%. This takes our ROE to 14.3% this quarter, which is an increase of 300 basis points year-on-year and 127 basis points quarter-on-quarter.
Not only are we growing strong on profit delivery, we are also continuing to acquire customers at scale. With 1.4 million customers acquired in quarter one, our active customer base has grown 32% quarter-on-quarter to 4.8 million. We disbursed INR 8,049 crores in quarter one, three times of what we did in quarter one last year. 73% of our disbursement was in retail and SME segment, which now comprise 64% of our overall loan portfolio. We are already at our desired mix as per our guidance provided earlier. In retail, we continue to drive granular growth with portfolio average ticket size reducing from INR 4 lakhs last year to INR 40,000 in quarter one. Our digital ecosystem strategy continues to fuel growth with 47% of retail disbursements coming from digital ecosystem in quarter one.
We focus on leveraging data analytics to leverage cross-sell opportunity on the large customer base we acquired. We saw nearly 20% growth in our digital portfolio come from cross-sell of personal loans on the customer base acquired through the digital ecosystem. Further, on asset quality, our gross stage three book is maintained at 3.2%, while our stage two book has reduced over previous quarter. Our collection efficiency is at a 99.3%, consistently better than the pre-COVID levels. We have progressively increased our stage three PCR or provision coverage ratio, taking it to healthy 48% in quarter one. I also want to highlight that 70%-73% of our portfolio is secured in nature.
As of quarter one end, we have only INR 500 crores of the initial restructured book which is under moratorium, which is only 0.85% of the overall portfolio. On rest of the restructured book, we are witnessing a healthy collection efficiency similar to last quarter. With that, let me spend a couple of minutes on key developments in our growth strategy. We continue to focus on four essential pillars. one, retail portfolio expansion with increased granularization. two, specific industry focus and digital platforms to drive SME and B2B segment. three, acquiring customers at scale using digital ecosystem and data analytics. four, increasing direct sourcing through our branch expansion in tier 3 and 4 markets. I have strong outcomes to share in each one of these areas.
Starting with retail, this segment grew 80% year-on-year and 15% quarter-on-quarter to INR 20,249 crores. In terms of mix, it is at 35% of the overall portfolio as of June 2022, an improvement of 10% over last year. More so, the contribution from new products such as small ticket loans and digital ecosystem grew nearly 4x in the last two years. These products make up 32% of the overall retail segment, and this mix has increased from 15% in quarter one last year. Similarly, in SME segment, we focus on specific industries, deepening penetration and leveraging digital MSME platforms to source from across the value chain. The SME business distribution footprint is now live in 25% of ABFL's branch footprint as of quarter one this year.
Targeting SME clusters in chosen industry sectors. When it comes to investment in technology, we have two-pronged approach. We consistently look at enhancing our platform to onboard and underwrite customers faster, and we have shared few key outcomes demonstrating strength of our technology capabilities, especially in three areas, customer acquisition, servicing, and process automation. Lastly, expanding share of direct sourcing is key to our retail strategy. We increased our branch count to 191 as of June 2022 from 159 in March 2022. We have also increased our sourcing from direct and digital ecosystem channels to 51% as compared to 21% two years ago. Our plan is to increase this further. While we grow our branch footprint, we have been successful in maintaining our cost income ratios at similar levels as of last quarter.
Our financial numbers highlight our commitment to our strategy, and we are well equipped to deliver strong growth momentum in FY 2023. We set out our growth aspiration for FY 2023 in the last quarter, and we are confident of delivering an overall loan book growth of 20% in this financial year. With our small ticket and digital ecosystem firing at scale, where we expect more than 2x growth by year end. With our current growth trajectory and continued focus on key segments, our ROE should comfortably reach the guided range of 16%-17% ahead of time. Now I will shift to housing finance business. Coming to housing finance business, we had stated earlier that growth in affordable book is expected to drive superior returns. We have seen growth in disbursements in our target segment in the housing finance business as well.
Quarter one disbursements were up by 170% over the quarter one last year. Of this, the affordable segment disbursement mix was almost 50%. This has taken the affordable portfolio mix to 39% from 29% in the previous year. The shift in the segment mix, supported by the lower cost of borrowing, has helped the organization to report the highest ever NIM of 4.59%, an increase of 59 basis points over the last year. Not only have our margins expanded, but our customer selection and calibrated underwriting strategy has helped risk-adjusted returns, which is defined as NIM less credit costs, to expand by 120 bps over the previous year. With improvement in margin, housing finance PAT for quarter was up 45% year-on-year, taking our ROA to 1.9% and ROE to 13.7%.
Efficient collection management of 97.9% has led to a lower credit cost of 52 basis points compared to 1.14% last year. Only 3% of our portfolio is under moratoria, most of which is due for unbooking in quarter two. We have created sufficient management overlay across all stages. We also have very comfortable ALM and our capital adequacy is at very healthy 23.8%. Growing our affordable book continues to be our focus and to drive affordable penetration further. We have expanded our branch count to 121 branches, with 76% of these branches are in tier three and four markets. We target to increase our branch footprint to 200+ by end of this financial year. We have also augmented our frontline capacity to drive affordable volume and create additional distribution capacity.
Direct sourcing is already healthy at 72% in quarter one of this year, and this really ensures higher customer stickiness. Our progress in digital capability gives us the confidence of scaling up ecosystem partnerships and co-lending as an alternate sourcing channel. On the technology front, we have made some good progress. Majority of our customers are onboarded digitally. Overall, 92% of our customers are onboarded digitally. On service front, we have enabled multi-channel servicing, which includes WhatsApp, eBots, Google Assistant, and self-serve portals. This has led to 77% of our customer interactions coming from digital channels and over 98% of our housing collections are through digital means. With this, I would like to sum up the housing finance business. A structured shift in our business mix, wider geographical footprint, and increased distribution capacity, we expect to see 20% growth in portfolio and steady margins.
We have already surpassed NIM and ROA targeted for FY 2024, and the focus is now on growth as the operating leverage will now improve these metrics further. With this, I will pass it on to Bala for our asset management business.
Thanks, Rakesh, and good evening to everyone. As presented in the AMC analyst call, it gives you the overview on AMC performance. Our total quarterly average assets under management for the quarter ending June 2022 stood at INR 2.99 lakh crore with an annual growth of about 2%, continuing to maintain our leadership position in the industry. Our equity mutual fund AUM grew by 14% year-on-year to touch INR 1.79 lakh crore for the quarter ending June 2022. In fact, our equity asset mix now touched all-time high, with 14% of our total assets coming from equity. Total average growth about 200,000 new portfolios in the current quarter, in the last quarter. Overall, the FPC book has also shown improvement.
It has moved from INR 816 crore as of June 2021 to INR 898 crore coming from 32 lakh live FPC investors. With respect to alternative business, as we have been updated in the past that we have built a separate team of people to drive this business. In fact, our passive product offerings grew by six times to INR 1,299 crore in June 2022. Our emphasis on building passive strategies also gained momentum by way of launch of more products through ETFs, fund of funds, multiple index funds. Our existing passive book has grown from 20 - 28 schemes. There are another 20 schemes in the pipeline to be launched this year. Our customer base in the alternative category, especially the ETF, has grown to about 4.22 lakh portfolios.
With respect to the offshore business activity, we have received seed funding approval for Aditya Birla Sun Life ESG Integration Strategy Fund to be launched. With this, we will take this product to the more number of investors in global market and look at raising more money in this plan. With respect to offering more products to NRIs and with respect to also offering our product to NRI investors, we have planned some launches in this area subject to our regulatory clearances. On the real estate front, the first round of subscription to Aditya Birla Real Estate Fund, Stressed Opportunities Fund, are got closed this quarter. We are evaluating multiple options both for offshore opportunity as well as onshore opportunity in the second launch.
Moving to the financial number, our focus continues to remain achieving robust asset mix between equity and fixed income with high margin focus. We are maintaining our operating revenue and PBT even during the volatile quarter, as Vishakha Mulye has mentioned. During Q1 FY 2023, despite market volatility during the quarter, our revenue from operations remained at INR 303 crores as compared to INR 5 crores at the similar quarter of last year. Due to market volatility, the AMC trust portfolio, which is in excess of INR 2,200 crores, has seen a mark-to-market impact leading to a decline in other income compared to previous years. As a result of this, our overall profit after tax stood at INR 103 crores in Q1 FY 2023, while maintaining overall operating income close to the previous quarter.
With this, I'll hand it over to Kamlesh for giving update on BSLI performance.
Thank you, Bala, and good evening to all of you. After growing for the last two years at a healthy 30%, which was in line with the private industry growth, for the first quarter of this year, BSLI grew at 26% in the individual life insurance business and 193% in its group life insurance business because of the chance Life fifty-three. The good part about this growth is that it has been led by both productivity as well as the additional capacity that we created in the last quarter of last year. The total premium is INR 2,620 crores for Q1 has seen a healthy growth of 49% YoY, with a two-year CAGR of 25%.
The total premium growth is fueled by strong performance on renewals, where we collect 74% in value terms and close to about 88% in terms of AOPs digitally. We have seen improvement in all cohorts for consistency, with 13-month consistency now at 85.3%. On slide number 57 tells the story about our new products. Our new product success continues, and it has contributed to 57% of our business in Q1. We've launched an interesting product in July, which actually will compete with bank fixed deposits space. Our new Par product will help us complete the suite of our product portfolio. Our pre-approved personal loan, which we call PASS, the success of that continues with 14% business contribution in Q1.
Our relatively younger customer profile has allowed us to get 28% of our Q1 business from upstairs. Our group business grew at 193% in Q1, and this is on the back of a 74% CAGR for the last two years. The AUM in this business is now at INR 16,000 crore. In the profitable unit segment, we continue to be the second-largest player. This year we are looking at more than doubling our credit life business under the group business umbrella. On slide 58 gives you a picture of all our quality parameters, and we have done consistently well across all persistency in various buckets, be it 13th month, 25th month or 61st month, along with well-managed OPEX to premium ratio.
The firm now manages an overall AUM of INR 60,000 crores, and we've had a good year on our investment management, doing better than the respective benchmarks across our various funds. Our digital adoption across the various areas is visible in slide 60. 97% of our new business is sourced digitally, and practically all of them come with an autopay mandate for subsequent renewals. In line with our guidance given earlier, 57% of the sourcing is now auto underwritten. 81% of all our services are now available digitally. Our self-service customer portal alone now contributes to 68% of our overall transactions. On slide 61 is the margin story. We have managed to post positive net margin in the first quarter itself this year and at 2.5% net VNB margins.
We closed last year the net VNB margins at 15%. With this healthy start that we have had this year, we are on course to deliver a net VNB of closer to 18%, which will again be one year ahead of our previous guidance. For the years ahead, we continue to maintain our guidance of doubling our absolute net VNB for financial year 2025. With COVID claims now at subdued levels for two successive quarters, our claims are in line with plans. Please note that we continue carrying a COVID provision of INR 47 crore for the balance part of this year. To sum it up, our Q1 performance has been one of strong growth, with all our quality parameters doing better than last year.
This momentum will help us grow this business in a value-additive manner on both top line as well as product improved profitability for subsequent quarters. Thank you, with this I hand over to Mayank for the health insurance update.
Thanks, Kamlesh. I'm happy to now present the performance of our health insurance business. We had a very strong performance in the quarter, enabled by the very strong foundation of a differentiated health first model we have set over the last five years that we have been in operation. The power of the proposition, which is more inclusive, but more importantly relevant and engaging, leveraging the very powerful tenet of consumer's health, has found a lot of acceptance by consumers and intermediary folks. We had in the last quarter of FY 2022 demonstrated the superior unit economics of our business model by bringing up one of the fastest quarterly breakeven in the health insurance industry.
Further, given the tailwind for the category and all the enabling steps taken by the regulator and the government the last few months, we had given a guidance that we will now be taking up a growth agenda and get the growth leadership back that we've enjoyed over the last many years. We are pleased to inform that at 71% growth YoY in the last quarter, we were the fastest growing health insurance company in the country, well ahead of the industry growth at close to 21% and SAHI growth at 29%. This was of course powered by our retail franchise growing at a healthy 37% YoY. In addition, our corporate business grew at 168%, led by a huge focus on cross-sell and up-sell and creation of a new category of offering corporate OPD.
These two together constituted 41% of our corporate business in the quarter. We believe we have set up one of the most profitable corporate business in health insurance in the industry. Overall, we acquired 3.7 million net new customers during the quarter, taking our overall customers served to 22 million, a 57% YoY growth. This has helped us take our SAHI market share to 12%, a 300 basis point increase YoY. On the profitability front, our combined ratio came down to 109% for the quarter, a large reduction from the 154% in the same period last year because of COVID issues. This brought down our quarterly loss to INR 71 crores from INR 128 crores in the same quarter last year.
Higher scale will continue to create operating efficiencies as we move ahead, and we'll continue to monitor our claims experience very closely. To take our differentiated model ahead, we continue to launch new range of offerings. Apart from corporate OPD, we also launched a one of its kind retail OPD offering. Our flagship product, Activ Health, which gives 100% premium back to customers for good health behavior, and it's one of its kind, not just in India, but globally, continues to be a huge success and was rated the number one product in health insurance by Forbes and CNBC. Our digitally enabled distribution mix is the most diversified distribution in the industry, with agency being the single largest channel at 22% of our retail business. We now have more than 68,000 advisors across 200+ branches.
We leveraged the One ABC branch strategy to nearly double our branch network at a low cost, and we are also synergizing with other BUs in areas like common advisors. We now work with 14 banks, having added IDFC First Bank and Bank of Baroda in the last quarter. On the digital front, our own digital business and the alliance, digital alliance partners business together grew 130% YoY, becoming a sizable 16% of our total retail mix. We continue to invest extensively in our tech and digital capabilities with a clear focus on superior customer experience and scale hyper-personalized engagement given our Health First model. We continue to enhance our digital health and wellness ecosystem, which now has 60+ partners and digitally available. We're now working with multiple Insurtech and Healthtech players to enhance customer value and operational efficiency.
At 94%, we have the highest claim settlement ratio in the industry, a testament to our focus on key moments of truth for our consumers. Our digital-powered scale engagement helps us to know our consumers better with much wider access to customer health and lifestyle data. We are using these through high-end analytics tools to create a much better business outcome across the life cycle, as outlined in slide 71. Looking ahead, we will continue to grow the franchise aggressively with a clear eye on best-in-class unit economics. We're now expecting to surpass our guidance for the 40% growth aspiration for the year, as we gave at the beginning of this year. This will be powered by a focus on getting more out of what we already have.
Fresh capacity creation, both in agency and other channels, and also looking at exploring offerings, the large pool of white space is not yet addressed by the industry. Thank you. I'll now pass it back to Vishakha for closing remarks.
Once again, thank you, all of you, for joining us this evening. We are very happy to take if there are any questions.
Thank you very much. We'll now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone 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'll wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. The first question is from the line of Kunal Shah from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Good evening. Vishakha, particularly on the strategic side, when we look at it, as far as the entire Aditya Birla Capital is concerned. Maybe in terms of the priorities out there and any strategic changes that you are looking at, or maybe what we are seeing in terms of retail plus SME, the targeted levels which are there within affordable housing that continues or there would be any kind of changes which you are looking at the strategic level. What would be your priorities at the business level, at the product level, at the team level, if you can highlight that.
Yeah. Kunal, as I said in my opening remarks, that if you look at the franchise, we virtually have all the products across, you know, the SME customer segment, starting from a retail customer going up to the large corporate. The second thing I would say is that each of our businesses have now demonstrated and, you know, the growth that we have seen is across our businesses. I think that momentum will continue as we go forward. My belief is that in each of our businesses we have building blocks in place, and I think, they are in their inflection point. As we feel the momentum in the Indian economy that all of us are extremely excited about, we will see this growth reflected in our performance as well.
Now, what is unique for, you know, Aditya Birla Capital, in my mind is, that, you know, the ownership of the customer. We today have close to 39 million customers, as I said, which is a growth of almost 55% year-on-year. We expect that growth of acquisition of the customer continue as we go forward. We will work on our One ABC strategy, which means one customer, you know, the One ABC branches, and so on and so forth, to actually cross-sell and upsell the products. We gave you the numbers as well, which are now reflecting, and we will only accelerate that, Kunal, as we go forward.
which will contribute to our bottom line as well as providing the complete solution to our customer. The second thing that we will leverage, you know, going forward is also the entire ABG ecosystem. you know, which of course, we have done a modest beginning, but we will continue to leverage that, whether it means that the suppliers, you know, the customers, the employees of the ABG, again, they could be our customers directly, and we have already started that journey. we will only accelerate as we go forward, which will also help us to add more customers to our franchise, but we'll also have a profitable growth as we go forward.
Of course, you know, for doing all this, the technology and analytics will play an important role, you know, in order to have the seamless journey across products and customer segments.
Sure. This would be even in terms of the priorities if we have to set out maybe from the medium-term perspective and the longer-term perspective, like these are the areas, these are maybe some of the gaps which you would want to fill at the entity level. What would that be?
Kunal, we continue to identify those gaps, but I think we have articulated our strategy in each of our businesses, so there is not much of a difference. Probably what we need to do is we have to continue to focus on the execution of that strategy. Just to give you an example, in case of ABFL, we have said that we will continue to utilize our book. If you see 64% of our book today, the book is coming from the retail side of the business. We will, you know, continue to focus on our SME clients as well. We will continue to leverage our ecosystem within the group to acquire these customers profitably.
Of course, we will be calibrated on our approach on the large clients. You know, I think in each of the businesses, again, we have identified the specific focus areas, and we will continue to, you know, work on those.
Okay. Broadly, maybe the existing strategy continues. The only thing will be some acceleration out there, much more focus on the execution and leveraging through the cross-sell and the upsell.
Yes. The ABG ecosystem. You're right.
Sure. One question for Rakesh Singh in terms of when we look at the restructured pool. In fact, that's down quite substantially on a quarter-on-quarter basis from almost INR 1,700 odd crores- INR 500 odd crores. How has been the movement? It has been largely the repayments, prepayments. Have we seen any kind of a slippage because we are seeing some inch-up in the retail and the SME side? How has been the movement from this restructured pool?
Kunal, we had total of INR 1,599 crores of restructured pool. Out of that, now only less than INR 500 crores is left, which is not open for repayment. Others have all opened up. On whatever the accounts which has opened up, we have a 91%+, collection efficiency on that pool. Quite a decent performance of the restructured pool, Kunal.
Okay. 1,663 would be down to 1,599 as such in terms of the principal portion, the principal repayments. Out of that 500 is something which is still under the moratorium. On balance, we are seeing like almost 91% of the collection efficiency.
Yes. Yes, Kunal.
Okay. Got it. Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you. Participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Paras from Samco Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening. My question is around the digital ecosystem niche products and the BNPL business. Are these-
Paras, sorry to interrupt you. You're not audible. Can I request you to speak little louder over the handset?
Sorry, sir. Yeah. My questions are around the digital ecosystem niche products. Are these BNPL products? What's the typical tenure of these loans? What is the mix of various products in this category?
We have different products for different ecosystem. We have BNPL, yes, for the consumer segment. We have checkout financing. We have merchant loans. We have lifestyle loans. The entire range. We have healthcare financing. We have an entire range of offering which we have, and not only BNPL.
Okay. Would you be able to provide the mix of these products in this category?
Yes, we can provide you that for different products, we have different tenures there are. Short, there will be a short-term loan for BNPL, but for education loan, it might be 18-24 months. For healthcare, again, 12-15 months. Different products have different tenures.
Okay, and what would be the percentage mix of these products?
I can share that with you, yeah. I think getting that number should follow up with you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Participants, you may press star and one to ask the question. The next question is from the line of Dipanjan Ghosh from Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening. Am I audible?
Yeah.
Sure. Just a few questions from my side. First to Kamlesh, if you can, you know, give some color on your wallet share across some of the banking partners and how they have grown, more from a qualitative aspect, if you can, you know, shed some light, and also the products across some of these partners. The second, on the margin front, the year-over-year increase that we see is it just led by the mix change and maybe some amount of operating leverage, or has there been some amount of changes within the margins within the specific product categories also? Second, I think to Mayank, a few questions, on the health insurance business. Since RBI has recently started publishing the retail renewal ratio number.
If you give me some color on that, even a 5/22 trend will work. Second, the customers who entered into the system around 2018 or 2017, the first customers into the ABH ecosystem, they have broadly completed four to five years now. How do you see the claims in those cohorts versus the overall claims on the book or let's say even compared to peers? Lastly, when I see your presentation, I see that there is, you know, strong uptick in origination through the digital ecosystem partners for ABH. If you can, you know, shed some color on the operational trends like persistency or claims ratio or price sensitivity for the customers in the digital ecosystem versus those originated through agents or let's say banking partners. Okay.
Quite a few questions, but yeah, that's all from my side.
Dipanjan, Kamlesh here. Let me take your second question first. On net margins that have gone up. Yeah, I think it's a combination of more leverage that we are seeing in our proprietary business. On the business composition front, more leverage there. That's partly the reason for net margin expanding. B, the mix obviously makes a difference on the net margin. If you see the business contribution would have been down as compared, we have done better than the plan. Obviously the composition of the product that we sell has a contribution on net margins. Some part of the sensitivity interest rates have been higher as compared to what they were. Some part of that contribution also comes into the net margin.
Overall it's a play that is there across some of these parameters that have helped us expand the net P&L margins, and that's what gives us the confidence that we will be able to deliver the net margins for the year, which should be again one year ahead of our guidance. On your question on composition that we have, we have ties with about eight banker partners. We've seen growth actually across the entire and we operate actually in the public sector bank space. We operate in the small bank space, medium bank, and of course, we operate on HDFC, which is a large one. We've seen across the board growth rates coming in.
In fact, some of the public sector banks that we have grown by more than 100%. Some of the smaller ones that we have, they've garnered scale right now, and they're growing at about 40%-50%. Actually HDFC Bank continues to give us a steady state growth year-on-year. I think all of that has contributed to be on the partnership side. I think these were the two questions that you asked.
Got it.
Anything else before I give to-
Banker partnerships.
Sorry.
Banker partnerships. The same thing I said.
Thank you.
Within HDFC.
Okay. Anything else, Dipanjan? I'll hand it over to Mayank now to answer the questions that you asked him, and then if you have anything else, you can come back.
No, Kamlesh. I think that's fine. Just one. I think you mentioned 40%-50% growth across the smaller banker partners, around 100% through the PSU banker partners. Is that correct?
Yes, Dipanjan.
Okay. That will be for the quarter, right?
Yes, for the quarter. Yeah.
Oh, okay. Sure. Thanks. Thanks, Kamlesh.
Thank you.
On your-
Sorry.
On your question on claims, you know, yes, we have cohorts of our business which have completed 3, 4 years, and therefore the waiting period. The big statement is that, you know, our claims experience are broadly in line with what we priced. As you know, we always have the ability to reprice our product, which is allowed under the regulatory regime, and we continuously monitor that. You know, you know, about 1.5 years back, we repriced one of our products to take care of the emerging claims ratio.
The other thing is that some of the claims ratio today are, you know, emerging because of, you know, we are just coming out of the COVID period, and therefore to the extent that, you know, the claims experience had COVID claims embedded in it, we'll have to watch for the next about six months and see how the post-COVID claims experience is fully playing out and even the non-COVID claims, et cetera, you know, start to emerge fully. Because as we know that, you know, in COVID situations, some of the non-COVID claims get postponed. We are, you know, keeping a close eye on how that trend is emerging.
Sometimes, you know, during COVID period, the non-COVID claims, cases, you know, had gone up as we have highlighted last year because of the additional, you know, testing, et cetera, that tended to happen in those. All of those are now starting to normalize, and we continue to watch that very closely. As the industry has done in terms of looking at repricing wherever required, we always have that opportunity, and we are well positioned in terms of the price range that our products have to have that ability to do well as and when we feel necessary. On the digital business, you know, there are two, three kinds of partners we have. One is where the very regular offerings are sold through partners like Policybazaar and other such web aggregators.
Our claims ratio are actually, again, fairly well, you know, in line with what we expect. Typically in health insurance, if you see the spread of claims, agency has you know on the slightly higher and then you see you know with such partners like Policybazaar and then banks. The obvious reason is because of the way they do customer selection is done. You know, the best selection tends to happen in the banks where you know the customers much better than let's say in an agency environment. Cost you know all of that are also accordingly spread where you have the lowest cost you know as you spread out the initial fixed cost in agency.
I think the, you know, each channel has its own kind of profitability signature. Again, there are other set of digital partners which are selling what I call the non-traditional buy side contextual in the context of the journey happening on their platform product. Where again we have had very, very good experience of claims well within what we expect and in some cases better. In which cases what we tend to do is to go back and make the product more kind of, you know, meaningful to the consumers by passing on some of the benefits in the way we reprice the products.
Our renewal ratios are, you know, yes, over a period of time, you know, we have seen that, the traditional channels which have been in the business for long like agency, which, you know, really, because health is a more high engagement, business. You know, you need the distributor to go and reset the product in year two. In year three typically you see a bit of a fall in your your 13-month persistency and then picks up very rapidly in the 25th and 37th month because once the consumer has paid for two years they tend to stay with that product. We have seen similar experience in our case in channels like agency.
Banks are now kind of finding the whole process to be, you know, become more mature because they have started selling health insurance more recently and the engagement model is also now starting to emerge, in terms of the way both the manufacturer and the banks tend to work. As we have seen the experience of life whereas they start making the process more mature based on their experience, that's happening in the banks also where they are now starting to catch up with the traditional channels like agency. Overall I think, you know, the experience is good and in line with what we see in the industry. Thank you.
Sure, Mayank. Thanks for the detailed clarification and all the best to the overall team.
Thank you. Participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Anuj Singla from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good evening, everyone. Thank you very much for the opportunity. The first question is with regards to the credit card partnership, which we have, the co-branded card with SBI Cards. The two questions there. One, how is the data sharing arrangement with SBI Cards and who will own the customer? What kind of value do we see here if, you know, SBI Card is going to own the customer there? Secondly, as per the recent directives, RBI seems to be becoming more open to giving credit card licenses to NBFC. Why not? Are we exploring opportunity to issue a card going solo? Is that something on the cards as well?
Yes, we have started. We have been working on this for the last seven to eight months with RBI with SBI in terms of co-branded card and which that is the one which we have launched. Yes, we are evaluating post the regulation which has come from RBI. We are evaluating in terms of can we do it ourselves and we are in discussion with RBI in terms of our application for approval. In terms of SBI co-branded, we are looking at distributing it to our customers within the ABFL within Aditya Birla Capital customer base and also extending it to Aditya Birla Group ecosystem. That's how we are looking at and also we will look at in terms of open market sourcing for this card as well.
We are looking at this step-by-step. We have already launched it internally to our Aditya Birla Capital ecosystem and we will extend it further to the group as well.
Okay. On this just to extend it, we will just be getting the sourcing fee and SBI Cards will have access to all the data on the customers. Is that correct?
These are our customers. We will have all the data of these customers. Once the credit history is built on these customers, we will have the ability to cross-sell any other, you know, lending product or insurance product from Aditya Birla Capital. We will be able to cross-sell to these customers, as these are our customers as well.
Okay. Got it. Second thing is, with regards to the capital requirements, like we have already outlined our growth for FY 25 and we are doing very well on the targets. When I look at the next five years, some of the businesses might need more capital including the insurance and the fast-growing health business. What kind of capital requirements do we see there and are we confident of generating it through the internal cash flows or will we be depending upon some kind of issuance? Will we need to depend on the market for that? Thanks.
At the moment actually, you know, we did our capital assessment and our view is that all our businesses are well capitalized. As you know we recently have infused some capital in both our life and health companies. As we go forward, we will keep calibrating you know the opportunities in the market and the capital requirements. Of course, we will evaluate all the sources which are available to us in order to raise that capital. Looking at our brand, looking at our positioning, looking at you know the parentage that we have, I don't see an issue in raising capital. It's you know for all our businesses.
Okay. Is there a timeline around that, Vishakha, given the targets you have set? Is it gonna be a 2-year kind of timeline or maybe a longer period timeline, like two to five year timeframe, as per the growth outlook that you have?
Looking at today's opportunities as we see it, I think all our businesses, we believe that, you know, we are well-capitalized for the next three years' growth. As I said, you know, we'll have to keep calibrating the opportunities in the market, you know, our own positioning, the, you know, how we want to leverage those opportunities. We will, you know, we will not starve our businesses for the want of capital. That much I can say. You'll agree with me that, you know, that capital therefore will not be a constraint because of the reasons that I articulated.
Okay.
At the moment, you know, we have looked at a three-year horizon. Yeah.
Okay. Got it. Thank you very much for that.
Yeah.
Thank you. Participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. Next question is from the line of Sahej Mittal from HDFC Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening, everyone. Sir, I couldn't, you know, get the claims ratio. If I don't know if it is excluding or the settlement rates which you could derive that from the first. Secondly was on the life insurance business. Given the kind of increase in non-par business which we are seeing, is there some repricing which you have done after the increase in the interest rates across bank fixed deposits? Yeah.
Sorry. What was the first question? I didn't get.
Sahej, can you repeat the question? It wasn't clear properly.
My first question was on the health insurance business. If you could give out a split of your combined ratio in terms of your claims and OPEX ratio.
On the combined ratio, out of 109%, it's about close to 55% claims and 54% expenses.
Got it. What's your target for the full year? I mean, in terms of combined ratio for the health business.
You know, this is something that we continue to monitor, because, you know, there's so much of growth tailwind that we have in the business that we like to participate, and given our growth leadership, I think and especially now that the regulator is also opening up so many more opportunities. I think that will depend on what stand we take on the new opportunities that come up. As I said earlier, we keep a very close eye on the unit economics of everything and every new business or every new opportunity that we pick up as we had demonstrated in the last quarter when we demonstrated our breakeven. That's the overall focus we keep in the way we, you know, run the business. Looking-
Do we think we are on the target to achieve 100% combined by Q4 FY 2023 at this?
You know, we had given the guidance last year that, you know, what was important for us to demonstrate is that our business model is unique and, you know, unit economics is much, much superior than what you would observe in a business where typically companies have taken seven, eight years to breakeven, and we demonstrated as much ahead of time. Now that we have demonstrated at a unit economics level, we would like to fully participate in the growth opportunity because, you know, if you're riding on it, you know, it's at a unit level a profitable business, you know, we will not like to leave that growth opportunity on the table and that's the growth mandate that even Vishakha was referring to earlier.
With all the tailwinds, I think it makes sense for the franchise to continue to build on this business because the rate at which the new consumers are also getting added can actually be very, you know, value accretive to overall franchise as well.
Got it. On the life insurance.
Yeah. Sahej, I got your question. You asked about the non-par business. Let me try and answer that. Basically what we do is we try and focus on the mix of what we sell, and it has to be relevant for the point in time. Two questions you asked about the mix that we have with the non-par is higher. I think higher interest rate scenario in the market provides an opportunity at that point in time to see whether you can place some of these products with your customers. Similarly, also because the protection prices are significantly higher at this point in time and the associated risk with that is not fully evident because we just moved out of COVID.
We basically are playing low ball on that and as and when we want to get back to the trajectory obviously we'll get back to protection. From a risk point of view, we follow a clear strategy to say that 100% of our expected maturity benefits are fully hedged. Therefore, we have a strategy which keeps looking at that at different points in time. Like I said, we've launched a very new innovative product which will compete with the bank fixed deposits that is also on a guarantee non-participating platform. Some part of the mix we'd like to make sure we get through the year because we are launching another product on par which will complete our product suite. It's a function of what we want to do at that point in time.
If there's an opportunity, like I said, because of high interest rates, we place those products. From a risk point of view, they are fully hedged. 100% of our expected maturity benefits are fully hedged.
Have we, I mean, repriced any of our non-par products? Have we increased IRRs on any of the products?
We look at our various products with rates changing at different points in time. Life insurance companies are allowed to reprice their products through what they call minor modifications. Yes, in some of our flagship products, one or two of them, yes, we have repriced some of these products with interest rates moving up as offerings to customers.
Got it. Thanks a lot. Thanks for that.
Thank you. Participants, you may press star and one to ask the question. The next question is from the line of Alpesh from IIFL Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening, and congrats on the set of numbers. Just two, three questions. First is on the housing finance business. We are running higher than the guided range of margins and the ROEs. What I understand from your comments that as the growth will pick up, the operating leverage will also play out. Would you like to revise the guidance on that front? That's the first part. Secondly, on the NBFC business, looking at the current state of the portfolio, including the COVID-related portfolio, which is coming out of the moratorium, et cetera, would you like to offer some guidance on the credit cost side?
The first question was on the housing in terms of revising our guidance. I think if you look at the profitability metrics, we have delivered what we had guided for. We are looking at getting to the growth metrics on the balance sheet, and that's what the focus right now is. We will continue to focus on the affordable segment with a focus on growth. If there is a need at the end of this financial year, we will relook at our guidance. Yeah. On the NB-
Sorry to interrupt you on this. In case you are going to grow on the affordable housing side, as the incremental mix is going to be higher on the affordable housing side, where do you see the margin compression coming up for you? In the sense, for you to have a ROA of 1.5%-1.6% versus currently you have 1.9%, the only metric that I can think of would be the margins, right? Since the credit cost has come more or less on a steady-state basis now.
If you look at our cost-income ratio because we have invested for growth and that will start delivering. We have increased our capacity, we have enhanced our branch footprint, and all of this will start delivering in terms of growth. As we get on to growth, all the investment which we have done on the cost side, that will start. I think you will see efficiency there. That should help us improving or maintaining the ROA, ROEs which you are talking about. Clearly our focus is.
Clear. In case the operating leverage is going to play out and your current ROAs are 1.9 versus the guided range of 1.5-1.6. The only metric that I can think of would be some compression onto the margins as the growth will pick up. Is the understanding right?
Margins, yes, if we start looking at the growth, there will be some segments which we were not focusing on and we start getting into those segments. You will see, but we want to really keep the margin in the same range. Some basis points here and there to keep the margins. We want to leverage all the investments which we have done on the cost front. That's how we look at it. Yes, we are not guiding that the ROE will come down with the increase in the growth. We want to maintain the guidance on the current ROAs which we have. Our focus will be on growth going forward.
Which are the products that you are not focusing and you would like to focus within the housing finance segment right now?
We see some bit of prime housing, which we can do. Some bit of construction finance right now is a very, very small portfolio, so we want to look into that. Also, the distribution which we have built from 62 branches last year to now 121 and our plan is to go to 200. That will help us to increase and improve our sourcing as well and that should help our book growth. All of this should combine to help us maintain the profitability.
Okay, got it. On the NBFC side, the credit cost, any guidance on that front?
No. Long-term guidance, we have been giving this. I think we will. If you see last quarter, it was 1.13%, our credit cost. We will stay in this range as of now because a lot of retail growth is coming through. Yes, the credit cost will come down on the corporate side. As we grow the retail segment, it will range in this 1.2% is what the guidance which we had given or we had discussed earlier and we will stay in that range.
Even in case of NBFC business you don't see any risk for the ROAs coming down from the current levels of 2.5%? If at all there will be some improvement with the operating leverage playing out.
Yes. We are looking at improving that. No, the ROAs won't come down.
Okay, great. Just last question on the life insurance segment. Since the protection we have been guiding for around 12%-15% kind of a mix. Currently we are at around 3%-4% kind of a protection mix. There are some issues at the industry level as well. Any guidance that you would like to offer? When we are giving a net VNB margin guidance of around 18%, what kind of a protection mix are we factoring into that?
No, the guidance of 18% at this point in time doesn't have any indication of the protection business going up significantly from where we are. The reason for that, like I said, is there is a significantly high pricing built in in this. It may look like a high margin product, but really, the insurance pricing in this business is significantly different from what it used to be. Therefore, risk adjusted and reinsurance adjusted, is it as exciting as it used to look one year back? The answer to that is definitely no.
Like I said, as and when, because we are in a post-COVID scenario, we are seeing prices even from an insurance point of view moderate, say in the group term insurance business now, not yet in the individual life insurance business. Previously where we used to be at 6% and we wanted to take that number to 10%, we were able to actually do that in about 90-120 days in the first quarter of last year. At this point of time, two things that you asked whether we think protection business will go up from here, it will be range bound at about 4-4.5% and our guidance of 80% is not dependent on protection business going up significantly through the year.
If there is an opportunity and prices moderate, and it becomes an interesting product both from risk like I said, adjusted for the insurance price, we'll step up the accelerator on that through in the second half or the last quarter of this year.
Okay. Just one final question on the life insurance. On the CLI business, in the group life insurance segment, do you expect the mix to remain the same or the mix is likely to change too in favor of any particular product?
You're talking about the credit life insurance business, right?
Credit life insurance. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, no. I mean, we are present across the various segments, be it microfinance, be it housing, be it personal loans. Like we created some products which has given us an uptake. In our endeavor to grow that business, like I said, more than double the composition or mix is not changing significantly.
Are there any profit pressures into that business or the competitive pressures coming up considering protection is having some issues right now?
You're talking about credit life business again?
Credit life insurance business again, yeah.
I mean, like I said, the repricing that happened across the group term insurance business, credit life and individual life insurance. We are seeing that pressure easing out on the group GTI and credit life to some extent. I mean, it's more a question of the opportunity and the products that we have which actually compete in the market slightly better. You have the advantage of being able to file that product and get an approval. That part is helping us drive, get higher momentum on the credit life insurance side.
Great. Thank you and all the best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rikin Shah from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Just had one question for Rakesh. If I look at the NPAs across NBFC and HFC, they have marginally increased up sequentially. Just wanted to check whether that was only due to slippage from the restructured book or there is more to it?
No. Rikin, yes, there is some slippage from the restructured book, and which we are looking at resolving in quarter two, especially coming from the SME segment. I think overall the numbers and if you look at from a provision cover also and also, stage two has come down for us. Collection efficiency is looking quite good. It's just that the restructured portfolio has slipped forward. Otherwise, I think portfolio is looking in good shape.
Would you be able to quantify the slippage from the opening restructured book in this quarter? Did I hear correctly that the slippage has mainly been the SME segment?
Yes, SME and the retail segment, these are the two segments, the small ticket loans. There is primarily the slippage that I have.
The amount of slippage from the opening restructured in this quarter?
I can just share that with you Rikin offline. I don't have it readily available.
No worries. Thank you very much.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraint, that'll be the last question. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Vishakha Mulye for closing comments.
No. Again, thank you very much for joining us this evening for our call and we look forward to keeping in touch. Thank you so much.
Thank you very much. On behalf of Aditya Birla Capital Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.