Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Q3 FY25 earnings call of Go Digit General Insurance Limited, hosted by ICICI Securities. 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 Mr. Anshuman Bhat from ICICI Securities. Thank you, and over to you, Anshuman.
Thanks, Manav. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of ICICI Securities, it gives us immense pleasure to host the Q3 FY25 results conference call of Go Digit General Insurance. I now hand over the call to MD and CEO, Mr. Kamesh Goyal, post which we will open the floor for Q&A. Over to you, sir.
Thanks, Anshuman. I think just a small correction. Our MD and CEO is Jasleen, who is sitting next to me. We also have Ravi Khetan, our CFO, Abhishek, our finance controller and Tejas, who heads our investor relations. So I think getting on to the presentation, and as always, we'll try and cover the presentation in about 20 minutes or so, and then have about 40 minutes to answer any questions that you may have. Let me just start by thanking you for joining us at a bit late evening. So when we look at slide number four from the serial number, as you know, this is the slide which we have where we give certain KPIs. I think gross premium INR 7,700 crores, total number of customers now 6.2 crores. Assets under management is about INR 19,000 crores.
As you know, in our business model, the leverage plays a very important role. In case of Digit with higher retention, our leverage is very high. I think amongst the largest players would be highest in the industry, and I think that continues. Customer satisfaction scores, all of them stay amongst the best in the industry. Moving to the next slide, maybe spend a bit of a time here. I think we are giving numbers both for nine months as well as for Q3. In Q3, if you look at, we are showing a premium of INR 2,677 crores. As you know, from 1st of October, 1/N has been implemented. When we compare to last year's quarter, Q3 2024, on a like-to-like basis, then our premium would be INR 2,738 crores instead of INR 2,677 crores because of 1/N.
Roughly about INR 60 crores of the premium has been moved in the next stage. Loss ratios compared to last quarter, 74.5% to 72%. When we look at combined ratio, combined ratio has improved to 108.1% compared to 110.3%. Now, when you look at the press release and when we, and I'll come to that later because I think that's an important point to make here, profit after tax has increased from INR 43 crores to INR 119 crores. ROE non-annualized for the quarter is about 3.1%. For nine months, non-annualized ROE is about 9.6%. Our net worth in Indian GAAP has now crossed INR 3,900 crores. Solvency ratio is strong at 222%. Now, moving to the next slide, I think this is more the GWP. Here, I think if you look at nine months, our growth rate overall has been in nine months for industry is 8% against that Digit is at 15%.
And again, if you see without 1xN, the growth rate in quarter three, where growth rate would be about 13%, and for nine months, it will be about 16% on a one-to-one basis. So we are continuing to grow substantially higher than the industry growth rate on a nine-month basis. And even in Q3, growth has been better than the industry. Moving to the next slide, and I think here you might recall that even in the last call, I was saying that Indian combined ratio doesn't really indicate the true reflection of profitability. And I think if you look at this in third quarter purely, because of 1xN, the premium which would have come under GWP, from GWP, it would have come under net earned premium.
And when you look at combined ratio, where you look at claims ratio plus expense ratio as a function of Net Earned P remium, because of 1/N, the denominator has actually reduced. So the expense ratio has moved up. If we have to compare this on a similar basis with Q3 2024, then our combined ratio would be 107.2, which is an improvement of 3%. Now, what is interesting is that when we are moving this 1/N, something which would have been recognized in premium, gross return premium, Net Earned Premium, it would have actually gone to unexpired premium reserve under accounting entry. And when we are moving this from gross premium to advance premium, there again, there is no accounting impact. So here, actually, you will see our combined ratio is looking 1% worse, but it has no impact on profitability.
I think the question, and if you recall what I said in the last call, that our combined ratio was slightly worse, but profit had almost doubled. Now, here you can see combined ratio because of 1/N is actually becoming worse by 1%, but it actually has no impact on the P&L. And I think just wanted to reemphasize this point that Indian accounting now is becoming even more from a combined ratio perspective misleading because some companies will say, "We have moved the premium to next year." And the commissions also, if we are not paying this year, we will also move it to next year. Now, when you do that, then this year, in this quarter, you are actually not showing that as actual expenses which have been accrued, which are payable for next year.
In our case, though we have shown a premium of about INR 60 crore, which has moved to next year, the commission on that, which is roughly about INR 19 crore or so, we have actually provided that in Q3 already. So on a like-to-like basis, our combined ratio has improved by 3%. Premium recognition will happen in future years, but the commission of that is already accrued in quarter three. Now, if you think from this perspective, some companies who might not provide for this commission on the premium which has been deferred, then there is no like-to-like comparison with previous years. And then we move to IFRS, and there again, then another definition of combined ratio comes.
So I think the challenge which I see for everyone is that how do you compare two or three different companies' results if every company, each of these companies, is following a different accounting practice? So in case of Digit, when we publish in April our fourth quarter results and the full year, we are actually going to show that what is the combined ratio we look at from a profitability perspective, which has a direct correlation to profitability, and when one will move to IFRS, then what exactly is the equation? What do you need to add to arrive at the IFRS combined ratio?
When one will look at both these numbers, then irrespective of the accounting which one is doing, one can actually compare the past results with these numbers because we feel it is extremely important to define the benchmark correctly against which future performance will be seen. Otherwise, it will give you misleading results. I'll just stop here. I don't want to cover this point too much, but we'll be more than happy to answer any questions in detail as we go forward. I think profit we have already looked at nine months, INR 129-INR 309 crores, INR 43-INR 119 crores. In this profit also, I want to maybe give color to two or three things because this again is something which I said last time.
One, that expense ratio and loss ratio should be seen in totality because based on the product mix, etc., one can increase and other can reduce. And this will happen as the product shift is happening. So I think that is one point which is clear. The second point I wanted to make in our case, and if you remember, I had said that one should look at core insurance profitability, investment income without capital gains, what sort of a reserve release is happening over a period of a year and on the quarter-by-quarter. In case of third party, I had mentioned last time that almost 40% of the reserves were released in Q2, and that is why the loss ratio was looking higher. When we look at previous year, in 2023-2024, the total reserve release we had was in the whole year was 577 crores.
Out of 577 crores, 499 crores were actually released in the first three quarters. So quarter four had a reserve release of only 78 crores. This year, in nine months, we have released TP reserve release of about 336 crores. And if you look at quarter four, I'm not giving any guidance. We don't really know because our actuarial colleagues will do this as of 31st of December. But my personal best guess is that if last year was 577, we would be in plus minus 5% range in this. So I wanted to also emphasize the point that this year there is no extra TP reserve release which is impacting the loss ratio, which was not the case last year. The last point is capital gains and investment income. So if you actually see in third quarter, we had a capital gains of about 7 crores.
On a YTD basis, we still have a small loss of INR 2 crores. And when we look at our investment yield, our investment yield is 1.83 without capital gains in Q3 compared to 1.76 in the previous year. So our investment yield or fixed income is good. So when we look at overall profitability, just to summarize what I said, basically, there is no extra third-party reserve release which we are doing, which is impacting the loss ratio. There is no capital gains either in nine months or in the quarter, which is actually changing the investment income perspective. So whatever profitability you are seeing, it is actually coming from the core insurance business. So there is no, I would say, anything exotic about the profit. This is, in my view, the normal boring way of doing business, which is leading to this profitability. Now, moving to the next, sorry.
One point here again, if you look at overall, we have now increased our AUM by 3,200 crores. When we look at the reserve, the total capital which we had raised in the IPO, even without that, we would have increased this roughly by about more than 2,000 crores or so of AUM. In case of AUM also, while one might say that growth in AUM is good, though the growth in GWP seems a bit low, especially third party, because in third party, the reserves are created for long term. Here again, I wanted to say, and this has happened in case of Digit in Q3, that there are some businesses which come at a higher commission and some businesses which TP have come with a lower commission.
In case of Q3, a growth in AUM despite a lower growth in TP is good because high-commission business has reduced in proportion while lower-commission business has increased. So I just want to maybe emphasize this that all of us like some sort of a thumb rules for this, but our business, unfortunately, is more grounds up. And doing some macro calls based on how the portfolio is moving, how the growth rate in TP is, how the leverage will happen, all that becomes a bit difficult. And you can see our leverage, despite raising capital just six months back, continues to be 4.8. And if I remember correctly, six months previous quarter, this number was 4.7. So this has increased to 4.8. And as we had also said this, as we go forward, this should again slowly increase.
Now, moving to the next, I think this is our asset allocation. No major real change, very small increase in equity, 0.5%, some increase of roughly about 80 basis points in AT1 bonds. Otherwise, I think asset allocation is more or less stable in our AUM. I think when we look at loss ratios, as I said, I explained already when we compared TP last year to this year, about nine months actually having more than 85% of the reserves. If you look at others, especially health, etc., you can see that our loss ratio has improved substantially, and especially in Q3, our loss ratio has improved compared to previous year Q3. And this again, I think just to reemphasize, and this is a point I have made in the last two calls also, that we have seen some intense price competition in employer-employee.
This business, even on a ninth-month basis, is still degrowing for Digit. But I think the discipline on that is actually showing on the loss ratio. If we had gone for, say, 3%-4% additional growth in employer-employee business, and it would have come at a higher loss ratio, actually our profits would have reduced. So in our business, I think we have to keep this always in mind. And I'm saying this to remind myself and all my colleagues sitting with me here, is that growth in revenue does not translate into growth in profits. If you grow in the wrong areas, then it can actually be counterproductive. I think that's the point I wanted to make. Even if you look at fire, our loss ratio this year has reduced a lot.
But again, last year, and we had repeated it in our previous calls, especially in our Q4 call, first call after listing, that last year was bad for Net Cat, and there were a lot of large losses. While this year, we have also seen some large losses, but Nat Cat hasn't been as big. But again, over a period of time, these are the loss ratios, etc., which would change. In case of fire business, I think we are seeing some market discipline in pricing from 1st of January. So I think this is good from industry perspective, also from Digit's perspective, because overall, in nine months in fire, our growth rate has been better than the industry. And as some sort of a rediscipline comes, I think this is something which we see as positive, both from a growth perspective as well as from a profitability perspective.
Moving further, I think these are standard, again, like the first slide, slide number four. This slide is similar. Our number of APIs are increasing. We had started with some time back with one API that has also started getting traction. So this is something in terms of all of this, I would say, is something I would say more like a core principles of Digit, and the path or the journey on this path continues. In terms of additional information, as we also said last time, we will continue to publish our IFRS results. So you can see the nine months unaudited results on IFRS, and just to repeat what I said, when we publish our full results in April, we'll actually cover this in more detail as to how we internally look at profitability, having the same benchmark so that you are not changing the goalpost every time.
You don't really know where you stand. That's briefly on the presentation. I think I'm just in time, 20 minutes. We'll now be more than happy to answer questions. For that, I hand it back to Manav and Anshuman. Thank you so much for patient listening.
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 their 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'll wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. We have our first question from the line of Avinash Singh from Emkay Global Financial Services. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. A few questions. The first one is on your inward reinsurance. It seems that has seen a strong growth. If you can help us understand the underlying segment in this kind of nearly 560-odd crores of inward reinsurance premium that you have got this quarter. So what were the underlying segment? And second is on your corporate health. That segment, I mean, you said that the price competition is there and seeing kind of a decline. But in terms of profitability, it seems that had kind of a dramatically improved with that corporate health segment delivering a strong underwriting profit. So what do you see? I mean, how do you see this thing? I mean, is this trend going to be sustainable? Or I mean, with your sort of a changing mix, that corporate health becomes relatively less meaningful?
So, I mean, some color on that. That okay, what has worked in terms of profitability there? Because the underlying profitability improvement is strong. And thirdly, I mean, on motor TP, now, of course, I mean, there has not been a tariff hike. But if we see your performance, some peers, and overall industry also, still the reserve release trends are kind of really strong. And if you were to adjust that, I mean, the claims ratio in motor TP is still somewhat where I mean, it's profitable. The reason being that, okay, one has to look at discounted basis. And given this is the kind of a regulated mandatory product, I mean, the tariff cannot be decided allowing for higher expenses. So it will be more like decided by claims. So how do you see, I mean, motor TP tariff playing out next year?
Do you see it's kind of, again, no hike, or there could be certain segments where there could be hike, but no broad-based hike? So these are my three questions. Thank you.
Thanks, Avinash. In inward business, we basically write facultative inward. Facultative means every risk is seen on a standalone basis. You might even get some repeat business of a risk, but every slip is to be seen from a fresh eyes perspective. This is not a business where you are saying, "I'll write this in future." Every slip has to be seen, and then you write this business. Here in inward, in fact, the regulations also encourage IRDAI, Government of India. Everyone is encouraging to increase retention within India. We basically try and write business and property, basically fire and engineering, liability, marine, health, crop. In every single area, we keep on looking at slips.
I would say, on an average, and if I'm saying based on what I remember, that roughly if we see 100 slips, we probably would be accepting business in about 40 of them. So 60 of them, we would actually not be accepting the risk. So this is the answer to the first question. Now, in corporate health, I would say two things. In the last year, obviously, I would say it was a mistake which we made in terms of some pricing, etc. Because until you have two, three years of good data from the market on the basis of which you are quoting, it is a bit difficult to develop your pricing engine. So our team has done a great job in developing a good pricing engine.
We also check whether the data which one is getting on which one is quoting, whether that is reliable or not. We actually have a strong team in health claims, which is also negotiating with hospital for discounts and other areas. So in health, and we also have a new system in which we can do better customization of the product, but also have more control in terms of claims to reduce the leakage. So there is a lot of work which has gone into this. But equally importantly is the fact that if the pricing is not looking decent, our team is leaving the business. And you can imagine when the pressure of growth is so much, assumed pressure, I would say, our team has been able to manage and keep the discipline for continuously nine months.
I would say this is really the last point is equally important. What others we are doing, learning from mistakes, improvement, etc., that obviously is a continuous journey. We have recently put in a new fraud engine to detect frauds in health claims. That is also helping. I would say if we keep the discipline as loss ratio of others deteriorate, our other initiatives of improvement continue pace, we would make up this market, whatever business, additional INR 400-500 crores, I would say, in less than a quarter. And I think this we have to keep in mind. On motor third party, I think I would say that normally in a long-tail business, good companies would actually be conservative initially. And then each year, they would want to look at the reserves and revise them based on what they have learned.
We also know, and I think on our slide, we are publishing. Everyone publishes this NL-31, whatever that number is, declaration. If you look at those triangles of TP claims, I think it's there on slide 15 as of 31st March 2024. We'll actually see that from 17, 18 was only INR 50 lakh rupees estimate. One large claim came. There again, if you see 5.1, we increase it to INR 7.72 lakh next year. Then again, it's coming back to INR 57 lakh. Maybe by the time it comes, it will be adequate. If you look at everything else, our reserves we start with a higher, and then they reduce slowly. I cannot comment for others, but I think this will again get published as of 31st March. Our confidence level in our TP reserves is very, very high of our actuaries.
We are very comfortable with the loss ratios. As this, you will see each year when three years later, four years later, five years later, if the reserve release is happening, you basically, when you are writing business, you actually feel that the economic loss ratio is likely to be in this range, but you provide a higher reserve just to be prudent. Now, God forbid, some law changes, some Supreme Court judgment comes, so you don't want to be caught. If you look at even in non-TP, which is in the second slide, or overall whole account, which is in the 15, slide 15 here, you will actually see even in the whole account, can you go to 15? If you go to slide 15, you will also see even on the whole account basis, our reserving is pretty good here.
So I think that's the answer to the TP question, Avinash. Thank you.
Okay. Thanks. Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Supratim Datta from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. Now, on the worrying bit on motor TP, now we have seen as an industry, the reserve releases over the last one and a half, two years has increased. Now, going ahead, some of this benefit from the COVID easing or during COVID, cars weren't plying that much on roads, that would not be seen over the next two years. Hence, while I understand that in this year, we can maintain that the reserve releases are similar to last year, going forward, do we see that that could come down? That's my first question. Secondly, on motor OD, if I see over the quarters, the loss ratio has increased. And on the call, you also mentioned that you are moving away from high commission business to lower commission business. Now, is this also a move from new vehicles towards older vehicles?
So hence, if you could give us the split between what is your new versus old mix and how that has changed, if it has, that would be my second question. And thirdly, on the group health side, while you mentioned the initiatives that you have taken, is there now mention in the include the last?
Sorry, your voice is cracking.
Sorry, Supratim, your voice is cracking. We are unable to hear you.
Can you hear me now?
Yes, now we can.
Yeah. So what I was saying is on the group health side, does that include personal accident as well, the underwriting result in the P&L that you have mentioned?
Yes. Group health includes personal accident also, Supratim. On motor OD, I would say that new vehicles typically have the lowest loss ratio in private car. Commission is a bit higher. When you do your own renewals, then your commission reduces and loss ratio goes up. And the same is the situation for rollover. Now, obviously, in case of Digit, as our renewal book is increasing year by year, and we are also seeing some OEMs moving towards real-time pricing for rollover. One large OEM has just recently gone live with that. So the mix of in private car business, because OD basically means 70% of the premium is coming in from private cars in OD. Two-wheelers constitute about 22, and commercial vehicle only 8.
So when we see it from that perspective, we obviously foresee that OD loss ratio could be going slightly up as new business mix reduces, and commissions will be going down. And that's the reason I was saying one should always look at both numbers together. Now, in case of TP, what you said is 100% true, that in case of TP, the benefit as an industry, which was coming in from the past, would not come in the future. Now, what is it that one can do if the rates are not increasing? And here again, Supratim, I'll give you some numbers. So you might recall that initially, Digit had about four or five years back, 75% of the motor premium, or maybe 78%, if I remember, was coming from TP. OD was only 22%.
If you look at nine months, OD premium is 39 for Digit and TP is 61, while for the industry, OD is 41 and TP is 59. So what we have been doing purely from a Digit's perspective is that, one, OD proportion is increasing and TP is reducing. Secondly, even within TP, as we write business, our portfolio mix has substantially changed. And that is how we are actually trying to manage the loss ratio. And that is the only way one can do this. Otherwise, one can get caught badly in this.
Got it. Thanks for that. Just one, what do you mean by portfolio? You are changing the portfolio. If you could help me understand that.
The portfolio, Supratim, when you think about, you can think in terms of geographies. You can think in terms of vehicle mix, commercial vehicles, two-wheeler, private cars. Within commercial vehicles, within private cars, again, it could be more granular, could be based on, say, fuel, for example, new, old, for example. It could also be type of vehicle. Like everyone knows, a bus is a bus, but school bus is different, say, for example. CC of vehicle makes a lot of difference in terms of loss ratios. So that is how we have to keep managing the portfolio.
Got it. Understood. Thank you.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Kunal Thanvi from Banyan Tree Advisors Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Hi, Kamesh. Thanks for the opportunity. So my first question with regards to your initial comment on the combined ratio under IGAP. So just wanted to have a view on the fact that if we look at, say, both expense and loss ratios on NEP that is in that premium, does it give a better picture? Because both of those items, all the three items kind of flow through the P&L. That was question number one. The second question was with regards to the competitive intensity in motor, health and group health business, specifically the group health business, how we are looking at it now. And we'd say there have been a lot of media reports about reinsurance rates expected to go up from March, April. Any thoughts on that? Is there any possibility of pricing sanity coming back in the group segment?
And the third question was on long-term investment book mix. How do we think about equity mix in the book from a longer-term perspective since now we are profitable on IGAP basis and solvency is also in a reasonable shape? These are three questions. Yeah. Thanks.
Thank you. So let me start with the equity. I think I would say two things here. One is if you look at our IGAP net worth, it's close to about 4,000 crores. Now, our solvency already is more than 220%. Even if we raise, we don't need any capital at 222%, but I'm just giving a hypothetical answer to say, even if we raise 500 crores more capital, our solvency can say most to 250%-260%. The cost of this additional capital, which is the cost at which we are raising it compared to the interest rate to the investment income which we are generating, even if we take it at 150 basis point difference, 500 crores is roughly 7.5 crores. It will be maybe less than 2% of our pre-tax profit.
So now capital from any perspective is not really a constraint from either a growth perspective or from a set allocation perspective, and INR 500 crores on INR 4,000, even if we raise it, will be less than 12% or so. And in regulations, you can actually raise it up to 50%. So there is no real constraint. I think our investment committee of the board, our investment team is looking at opportunities. We are very comfortable to go up to 10% of our set allocation in equity. I think you can see that in quarter three when our investment team felt that the market to them is looking better, they have increased it by 0.5%. So increasing 0.5% or increasing AUM. So they are doing it. We don't have an artificial timeline that we have to have 10% equity in this.
We have left it to the judgment of our investment team as well as our investment committee. So that is on investment. On NEP, what you said is true. I'll give a very brief answer because we'll cover this in detail in April. NEP gives you a good idea. But I think we have, I have said this in the past, that if you reinsure your future premiums today and book all the reinsurance commission today, then it actually improves your expense ratio substantially. And then when you move to IFRS, there will be a huge difference between the combined ratio of the two. So when you move from IGAP to IFRS, suddenly results will start looking bad. So the idea is to find a way how do you move seamlessly from IGAP combined ratio to IFRS, and you actually know the economics of that.
This is what we'll try and do in April because as I think I've been saying this and initially as CFO wasn't happy when I would say this, that IGAP combined ratio doesn't make any sense at all as far as somebody like me is concerned from a profitability perspective. I'm saying this after having spent a decent, actually entire working life in insurance in different places. Now, on the group side, till December, we have actually not seen any significant improvement in reduction of competition intensity. It continues to be strong as of now. As I said earlier, this is like if I have to use in Hindi, "बकरे की मां कब तक खैर मनाएगी?" मतलब ईद तो आनी है. The Eid will come of this. I think people will lose money and then the correction will happen.
As far as the reinsurance rates, etc., concerned with employer-employee businesses, typically no reinsurer would touch it even with a barge pole, employer-employee. So this goes to the net of each company. So I personally feel that reinsurance rates would not really make a difference here.
Sure. Thank you. Thank you. If I can squeeze one more question, it was on how in-house was through CP for group and.
Sorry, your voice is cracking. I have to speak closer to the phone.
Is it better now?
Yes.
Yeah. So one more question I had was on in-house versus outsourced TPA for claim processing for group and the retail health business. If you can touch upon that, how do you think about it? Given the fact that retail is a very small segment today, going ahead, will we be comfortable doing it in-house versus, say, tapping the network of some of the large TPAs that are already there in the market? And secondly, with our motor DP book kind of coming down, does it also mean that your investment leverage incrementally could be lower than what we have seen in the past? Because motor DP is typically a long-term float that you get for.
So I think on TP, I already explained that all TP business is not the same. If you would listen to the recording, I tried to cover this already. So I don't want to honestly answer that question. Overall leverage with that mixing TP change which we are seeing, which should not reduce our leverage where we are now. All retail business is anyway serviced today in-house. We have a very large network of in-house TPA. On the group side, we also continue to work with the TPA and also do business in-house. So I think at the end of the day, we have to, there is a customer, there is obviously an insurance company. So we have to find what works for both under circumstances. In retail, I think in-house has been working quite well. In corporate also, we see group employer-employee.
A lot of groups prefer to be part of in-house, but we are happy to work with our TPA networks, and we are not driving business to say we will only do it in-house. We are happy to work with TPAs. One or two TPAs, I don't want to take names. Two of them have also worked with us in improvement of processes, tech integration, etc., so we would be happy to develop the relationships with them.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to address questions from all participants in the conference, please limit your questions to two per participant. Should you have a follow-up question, we request you to rejoin the queue. We have our next question from the line of Nitesh Dhoot from Investec. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity, sir. So first question is on the retail health insurance. You have been expressing your views on.
Sorry, Hitesh should have to be a bit closer to the phone. I think suddenly the voice vanishes.
Okay. Sure. I will try that. So on retail health insurance, the question is that there is a change in regulation where now discounting of premiums is allowed if the claims experience is better. So have you changed your views on retail health insurance, or do you still remain a bit cautious on that segment?
No, I think we continue to be cautious in this segment. We are of the view that the whole set of regulations in retail health haven't really panned out. So obviously, nobody has any internal information, but I think whatever we are seeing in terms of loss ratios development, in terms of what one hears, we feel that retail health as of now is not an area which we want to aggressively grow. We obviously are growing this business, but the only difference is that even from a small base, the growth rate is more or less similar to the industry. As of now, we are not seeing opportunity to grow retail health with a higher growth rate, Hitesh.
Sure. Sure. And secondly, I have a question on reserve releases. How much management discretion do the management have on the reserve releases in Motor TP and other lines of business? Because that is becoming a bit of an issue when we compare results across companies.
So Hitesh, I think I gave you numbers for last year of TP for the first three quarters, fourth quarter, overall number. We also gave you numbers for three quarters this year. I also suggested what the overall reserve would be. So in our case, this decision is completely of the actuaries. And management doesn't get into this to say, "Increase it by," because if your reserve, the actuaries feel that the total reserve release this year will be X amount. Now, one can have a discretion to say, "No, no, you can make it X plus 5% or X minus 5%." But you cannot come out and say, "Make it 2X, make it half X." Because there is a peer review of actuarial colleagues also. The report also of all this reserving, etc., goes to the regulator, and they also look at this.
So I don't think in any decent company, management would try to influence reserve release artificially. Because if you start doing these things, then you're basically fooling yourself. And no good professional actuarial professional would be willing to just do what the management is saying. I wouldn't do that ever, and neither any of our colleagues. I obviously cannot talk about others.
Sure. Sure. Sure. That's it from my side.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Sanketh Godha from Avendus Spark. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. So Tanish, what I understood is that you had a reserve release of around INR 336 crores in the nine months. And.
Sorry, Sanketh, you have to speak a bit louder. I think closer to the phone, please.
Is this better now?
Yes, better now.
Yes. So the question I was asking is, right? You had a reserve release of around INR 336 crores. And if I take it plus or minus 5% of the last year, it will be somewhere between INR 550-INR 600 crores. So a reserve release of another INR 200 crores can potentially happen in fourth quarter, which means that if you end up doing any fee of similar number, what you did is in the current quarter, somewhere around that number. So is it safe to assume that this reserve release itself will improve your loss ratio or combined ratio by 8-10 percentage points in fourth quarter?
That's what I ended up doing, Hitesh. So just wanted to confirm that that math is right or not. No, no. So I would say that last reserves were 337. In nine months, it is 336. So I said, based on where we are, and I would again say this is not a guidance or anything, we could be somewhere I don't foresee reserves going above 577 as of now. But what I was saying is that we could be somewhere around, say, 510, 520. Now, exactly what this will be will be decided by the actuary, our appointed actuary and our product heads. But all I wanted to say is going forward, unlike last year where we saw quarter-on-quarter volatility on reserve release, now we have a very decent experience of five, six years. COVID year is also behind.
So we will see lesser volatility than now one quarter X, next quarter 2X. I think that is something which I feel should not happen.
Got it. Got it. And the next question what I had was on motor third-party growth, basically. So in third quarter, growth looks a little better at 6% compared to industry growth of 8%. And in nine months, it is still very weak, 2% compared to industry's 8%. So you mentioned in the past that you are cautious with respect to this space right now. So have you seen any change in the behavior in the environment? And given December month was or third quarter is marginally better, we expect a motor TP growth to come back in a better way compared to or at least go in line with the industry, which is not the case for nine months at least.
Sanketh, last year for full year, our TP market share was 6.5%. On nine months, our market share in TP is 6.4%. In quarter four of last year, our market share was only 5.7%. Now, again, no guidance or anything in quarter one where our market share was quite low in motor and quarter three is only 6.2, 6.2%. So if this trend continues, if this trend continues, and since we are coming in from a lower base last year, there should be growth in TP in this year. But again, I just want to say that though some people feel that we are degrowing TP and things like that, if you look at whole year market share last year was 6.5, nine months at 6.4. So it's not that things have substantially changed even on the TP side.
This after taking a very big, and I think I said this earlier that we redid that TP portfolio in a very big way where in H1 of last year, our TP market share was 7.1%. In H2, this had actually reduced to 6%. So, last year in quarter two, in our second half, we had actually taken a lot of corrective actions on TP once we realized that the TP hike is not coming to ensure that we meet our target loss ratio.
Got it. But in broader sense, are you seeing a better environment now given you have inked up a bit of market share? So you're comfortable with the current pricing or payout structure in the TP business?
I would say, Sanketh, there are about, in my view, as a rough number, and I think recently our industry had also met the IRDAI on a discussion on this. What I understand is that maybe about 40% of the TP book of the industry is rightly priced. Maybe 10% book might actually can even see some small reduction in premium. But there is about roughly half book of TP of the industry which needs price increase because there is TP inflation, and for the last four years, there has not been any increase in TP business, and I think the way one can see this also is to say that the regulator still is giving, say, no TP obligation and things like that. It means that regulator feels that industry is not writing TP business freely.
And if industry is not writing TP business freely, then obviously it means they're not finding the right price. So my sense is, and again, this I am saying as an industry professional, this is not a Digit view, that about 50% of the book needs some price increase.
Got it. That's it from my side. Thank you.
Thank you, Sanketh.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Dipanjan Ghosh from Citibank. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening, sir. Just two questions from my side. First, while you have mentioned that for the nine months, the employer-employee business has decreased. Given that Go Digit has seen a little bit of better growth in Q2 on a YoY basis, would you like to kind of break it up between the employer-employee and the non-employer-employee for the quarter? And if there are some improving trends while keeping in mind that you've already acknowledged that the pricing pressure sustains. Also in the group employer-employee, when you look at the claims ratio and you mentioned that it has improved, so if you can kind of quantify the number and also kind of highlight, is it from the large corporate or the SME side, or is it a mixed change in favor of the lending-linked products which is really driving this improvement?
Dipanjan, I think all I'll say is that in the non-employer-employee business, the growth rate is more, definitely. Employer-employees, there is a slight degrowth. You'll have to excuse me, we don't want to give loss ratios in group health with that sort of a granularity.
But just for the third quarter, could you mention if the employer-employee business has been decreasing even, let's say, for the last three months or four months? Or has the trend directionally been improving?
So quarter three also in employer-employee, we saw a degrowth.
Got it. Thank you, sir, and all the best.
Thank you, Dipanjan.
Thank you.
We can take maybe one question, Manav.
Okay, sir. We have a follow-up question from the line of Supratim Datta from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity again. Just wanted to understand, now that we have moved to this 1/N method of accounting, so what happens to our EOM targets? And how are those changing? Have you had any discussion with IRDAI on that?
No, no. Thanks, Supratim. I think I missed this point completely. So I think last time, if you remember, we had given the full timelines of the EOM. So we actually, on December 27th, 2024, we have received a letter from the regulator granting us forbearance for EOM for year 2023-24. So last year, they have already given us a forbearance. For 2024-25, obviously, once the year is complete and we update the regulator, we will know. They have also asked us that we should give them a guidance on EOM for next year, 2025-26. And then they have asked us to give quarterly updates both to the board as well as to the regulator. But just to repeat, for year 2023-24, they have given us forbearance on the EOM.
Got it. And what happens to that EOM target of 30% now that we have moved to 1/N? Will that also be revised, or will it be looked at on the older version? If you could give us some sense on that.
Supratim, we don't know. But I think as we have been saying that as the year is over, 24-25, we obviously will give an update on the EOM to the regulator and to the board. And any development on that, we obviously will keep our investors and analysts posted on that. But as of now, at least we are not aware of if IRDAI has made any changes to the EOM. So till we see some circular, I would say the definition of GWP stays as it is.
Got it. And just one final question. So you initially mentioned that you are booking the commissions upfront on the long-term policies, but the premium growth or the premium is going to come in the later years based on 1/N recognition. So that implies, right, that your commission ratio going forward should be coming down because as this premium starts coming in, there wouldn't be a corresponding commission attached to it. And hence, we should see the commission ratio going down from 3Q1. Would that be a correct assumption to make?
So mathematically, yes. But on the other hand, if you say next year you have again done this business, then you'll again be booking that commission here. So my suggestion, Supratim, is that there are companies which do substantial business on this 1/N, while EOM is something which one has to look at. One should also, as I was saying, if one is not showing the commission as an expense this year, future commission, then even the P&L is not actually an apples-to-apples comparison of previous quarter. So one should wait for the whole year on EOM. I'm sure from a regulator's perspective, since they are monitoring this very seriously, we will see in the next three, four, five months if any changes, etc., are coming. As I said, I'm sure they will issue a circular for that.
We will also see how other players in the industry which till now were EOM-compliant, can they continue to be compliant on EOM?
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you.
And thanks, everyone, for joining. I think we'll just pass it back to Anshuman.
Yeah. Thanks a lot, everyone, for joining the call and on behalf of ICICI Securities, wish you all a very good evening. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Thank you. On behalf of Go Digit General Insurance Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your line.