Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Niva Bupa Health Insurance Q2 and H1 FY25 Earnings Conference Call. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements about the company, which are based on the beliefs, opinions, and expectations of the company, as on the date of this call.
These statements are not a guarantee of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. As a reminder, all participants' lines will be in listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during this conference, please signal an operator by pressing star and then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now hand the conference over to Mr. Krishnan Ramachandran, MD and CEO. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you very much. A very warm welcome on behalf of the entire management team of Niva Bupa, to each and every one of you for making time to be with us today. With me in the room are Vishwanath, our CFO, Ankur, our Chief Distribution Officer, Dr. Bhabatosh, Director of Underwriting, Products, and Claims, Dinesh, our Chief Technology Officer, and Vikas, our Deputy CFO and CIO.
Thank you again for making time for us today. As a team, this is our first earnings call after we got listed, and I just wanted to convey that we are very, very excited about health insurance opportunity in India. At Niva Bupa, we do feel we make a significant positive contribution to the economic development of the country by making sure that we provide affordable and high-quality health insurance solutions to the citizens of our country.
Indeed, our purpose is to give every Indian the confidence to access the best healthcare. What we'd like to do over the next 15 minutes is to give you an overview, since this is the first time we have the opportunity to address you, an overview of the company's strategy, as well as, of course, the financial results.
From a strategy standpoint, there are six pillars underpinning our strategy of competing and winning customers in the marketplace. The first is a growth strategy. It's about building a granular, growth-oriented, and profitable health insurance franchise. The second pillar is being the health partner of choice for our customers. The third is to build a multi-channel, diversified distribution network with an emphasis on digital sales. The fourth is to have a business model that's connected with technology and analytics. The fifth is disciplined underwriting and claims management, again, underpinned by expertise.
Our majority partner, Bupa, brings global expertise spanning over eight decades in health insurance, and we in India do leverage that expertise significantly, and last, perhaps most important in our mind, is a focus on balance management and execution.
On our growth strategy, for the first half of this year, the overall health insurance market in the country grew at 9.6%. Niva Bupa grew at 33.1%. Retail grew at 18.3%. Niva Bupa grew at 32.2%. Our overall market share improved on a year-on-year basis from 4.1% to 5%, and our retail market share on a year-on-year basis improved from 8.9%- 9.9%.
In terms of product mix, as of H1, 67.9% of our business comes from retail, 29.7% from group, and 2.4% from personal accidents and travel. Per customer, we believe today that we have a comprehensive portfolio of innovative health insurance products covering all life stages. We use several segmentation variables to design and offer our products. Many of our products are innovative and offer relevant features to the segments.
Three broad variables that we have used with much success in the marketplace include health status, age, as well as income. Today, we have a wide bouquet of products covering significant customer segments in the Indian market. Over time, our strategy has been not just product, but also to build propositions around health. We believe that we are a partner not just in illness but equally in wellness to our customers.
Towards that, we have enabled access to the PCP health and wellness ecosystem. We put in place what we believe is a solid and holistic customer health proposition, all made available through our customer app, and as of H1, we had 4.8 million downloads, monthly active users 400,000.
And through this platform, more than 30,000 people get their health checkups done on a monthly basis. More than 6,000 people get their consultations done a nd we have a range of health services that are available, and our customer app is very, very highly rated, both on Android as well as iOS.
We believe that it's important to continuously improve customer experience. We indeed are focused on measuring customer experience across 35 different touchpoints. And through small and large improvements, we continuously focus on improving customer experience.
Claims is the moment of truth in our business, and we have continuous improvement programs to improve customer experience across all critical touchpoints b ut importantly, the claims touchpoint and our NPS score have been steadily improving over time. We are a multi-channel company. This is by choice a s I mentioned, this is a carefully thought-through strategy for the company.
As of H1, about 30% of our business comes from agency. About 20%-30% comes through corporate agency and banks. 8.7% through corporate agents other than banks. 27%-20% comes from brokers, including digital brokers such as Policybazaar. A very high proportion of our business, close to 30%, comes from the direct-to-consumer channel.
We have significantly transformed our operation using technology and analytics. In the company, we refer to value chain transformation as intelligent automation. As of H1, close to 100% of our policies were applied from customers digitally. More than 95% of payments were made digitally. Close to 51% of cases were auto-decision using an intelligent and sophisticated underwriting rule engine.
We have a very advanced capability around auto-adjudication when it comes to claims t his is one of the more complex problems to solve in the Indian healthcare ecosystem. As of H1, close to 28% of our claims were auto-adjudicated. We're very careful and disciplined about our risk selection approach. More broadly, if I talk about our approach on portfolio management, we have a five-pronged approach to managing loss ratios on a sustainable basis, especially in the retail health portfolio.
The first is our approach to risk selection, and we have a lifetime value approach to that i t's a proprietary model that we have refined over the last four years w e believe that this stands us in good stead, especially when it comes to building a retail book that has sustainable loss ratios over time. Second is our approach to risk assessment, where at the individual level, depending on health status, we do charge premiums that are appropriate for lifetime risk. So we have a very mature and sophisticated approach to pricing risks appropriate to health status.
We believe it's quite different from what is there in the market. On claims management, we have a five-pronged approach, including rolling out a preferred provider network, auto-adjudication, which I spoke about, robust analytic capabilities around fraud detection, and capabilities that we borrowed from Bupa around billing review and case management.
And last, but perhaps most important in my mind, is this business we believe firmly is about balance and execution. It is an execution-intensive business i t is a complex business. We believe that talent, which is able to execute well, which is able to develop expertise over time that comes from focus, is critical to sustaining success.
We have placed a lot of emphasis on talent management within the company, and we use an important external marker to sort of guide us in terms of how we're doing on talent, which is the Great Place to Work Trust Index score, and there, in the most recent ranking, we rank or we feature among the top 25 in banking and financial services.
We feature as among the best places to work for millennials, and we also feature as a leading player, as the leading player, if you will, in the non-life and health insurance segment in India. At this point, to talk about financials, I'm going to hand over to my colleague, Vishwanath, the CFO.
Good evening, everyone. Following on some of the financial highlights for H1 2025, our gross premium grew by 36% from 2,436 crore to 3,242 crore. The growth rate in GWP for Q1 and Q2 are 31% and 35% respectively. Our net premium grew by 36% to 2,231 crore in H1. Profit under IFRS has more than doubled from around 28 crore to 60 crore in this financial year.
The seasonality of profit in the IGAAP, with H1 having losses. The loss in the IGAAP has also shown significant improvement and has moved from loss of around 80 crore last financial year H1 to loss of 6 crore in first half current financial year, resulting in around 26% improvement. Combined operating ratio has improved by around 120 basis points, 103.5% in current financial year YTD, from 102.7% in last financial year.
The upside is clear by improvement in loss ratio, which is 63.8% last financial year H1 and is 62.5% in current financial year. Annualized yield is 7.5% in H1 with AUM of INR 5,966 crore. Solvency ratio is at healthy level of 2.25 against leverage minimum of 1.50 based, on 30 September 2024. So this was an overview of H1 for FY25. Happy to take questions.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their telephone. If you wish to withdraw yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to please use handsets while asking a question.
We request that you please restrict your questions to two participants. For further questions, you may rejoin the queue. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question comes from the line of Varun Garg from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir c ongrats on the strong quarter. I just had a question regarding the agency channel. So if you look at the share of agency, it has been on a decreasing trend for us, largely because of higher growth in group e ven in Q2, I think it's down 200 basis points. So what is the growth in the agency channel and agency growth? And do you see this coming up for the second half, or do you know what is to be expected for the full year?
As of H1, our growth on agency was 25.6%. In terms of look, the reason why the share of agency has come down slightly is that bancassurance has grown faster. We have opened up more white spaces within our banks. We have added more bank partners.
So it's the outcome of an organic process. So we'd be comfortable with the channel mix as it stands today. So that's broadly the reason i t's the outcome of what happened with other channels as opposed to anything inherent with respect to agency. Agency is doing as we have envisaged as of H1. In fact, I would submit it's doing marginally better than our own internal ambitions. Overall, in terms of retail new business growth, we have grown in H1 at 30% growth as of H1.
I have that thing regarding the invested yield. Do you expect this to be upgraded given that there's what do you call? These yields are coming off and there's an expectation of rate cut and even the markets are not being as favorable as they were previously?
Yeah s o we do not expect this to sort of come down w hat we did was implemented a strategy. Since the last two years of investing in duration. And therefore, given the fact that the current portfolio, we have significant duration, we do not expect this number to come down significantly despite the falling yield in the G-Sec. We should be able to maintain equity. So we do not do equity. So this is all data I'm talking about. Largely from a data perspective, we expect this to be the new yield and we start to improve after all these levels.
Okay. Thanks for the details [Foreign Language]
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, please press star and one if you wish to ask questions. We have the next question from the line of Manish Gupta, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir i would like to congratulate you on your wonderful performance this first half year. Sir, I would like to ask a question that as we have seen this trend, the results for Q3 and Q4 are better than Q1 and Q2. Can we expect the same to follow this year as well?
Thank you, Manish, for the comment. Yes. On the Indian GAAP basis, historically, if you look at the last several years, our Q1 and Q2 are the weakest quarters, and Q3 and Q4 are the strongest quarters. So you can expect the same this year as well. I'll request Vishwanath as well to add. Just one other comment.
We do declare, and for the last two financial years, we have posted our audited IFRS statements. As you may all know, this has been notified by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. The Indian insurance regulator is in the process of finalizing the timelines for the insurance industry s o IFRS will become the standard sooner or later as far as insurance in India is concerned.
We consolidate our reports with Bupa on an IFRS basis, and we have our audited results available, and the results are a lot smoother if you observe. Vishwanath spoke about IFRS numbers as well. The results there are much smoother, but on an Indian GAAP basis, there is this looseness.
Yeah.
Nothing more to add.
All right. One more thing. I would like to tell you that I use your app as well, and you have worked with full features in your app. So I would like to congratulate you on that as well.
Thank you very much. Great to talk to you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Prayesh Jain from Motilal Oswal Financial Services. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Good evening everyone. Firstly, on claims, can you break down your claims ratio into what was the loss ratio in H1 on retail and what was the loss ratio on group versus the same as the last year?
Prayesh, so I will talk to you about loss ratio in IFRS this year. So last full financial year, the loss ratio on IFRS this year, and this is based on published accounts, was 63%. And for retail, it was around 63%. Current year, H1, the loss ratio, given the seasonality of infection, it's around 64.5% H1. And the loss ratio for whole year for retail, we expect that it will be around the same number, 65.1%.
Okay. Okay.
Prayesh, do you have any further questions?
Yeah. This is on IFRS basis, right?
Yeah, Prayesh. That's right.
The IFRS loss ratio for H1 was how much, please?
Overall, 64.5%.
Okay. A second question was on the expense ratio, which we have reported as GWP basis, that's 50%. And I think by next year, we have for the full year next year, we have to be at 50%, right?
For the full year next year, we need to bring this down to 30% plus allowances, so roughly 36% year.
Okay s o what is the glide path that you would look at?
In terms of the glide path, we have to consider glide path, and we are committed to conforming to the glide path and keeping in mind our next financial year. I think there's only one caveat that I'll add, which is that because of the 1/N change, and we recently had a discussion with the regulator as well.
On a like-to-like basis, we'll certainly comply. But given this change, there will be a significant impact as far as fixed expenses is concerned. And we believe the regulator is reviewing the transition because we have changed the goal post in the middle of this financial year. But otherwise, we are on a path to comply on a like-to-like basis.
Okay. And this largely would come from which line? I think the commission probably should be impacted. Is there any change?
Fixed costs. So fixed costs will now be declared over a different denominator. And that's a second-order impact w e're still assessing the impact on a full year basis. That is a second-order impact, just to be clear.
Thank you.
Thank you. Participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. Here's the next question from the line of Devanjan Ghosh from Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Good evening. So there's a few questions from sir, if you can give some color on you mentioned your new business growth around 40-41%. If you could kind of break that down across channels, or if you give some color on which channels are going faster. My second question would be more of a qualitative question, which is we may not be continuing to the quarter.
It's more on how does the same issue evolve as the weightage of the book really changes? I mean, look, we realized about a few years when the customers are moving from, let's say, three-year bucket to five-year bucket or ten-year bucket, moving across different demographics in the USA. How? does that triangulation really work in terms of overall combined movement and the loss ratio movement, whichever you think is a better perspective look?
The third question is the third and fourth questions are more of rating questions. One is if you can break your overall business between new and renewal for 1H or FY2024. And the last question is what proportion of your policies will be less than three years or in terms of premium and number of policies for the retail indemnity?
So I'm going to request the CDO to take a first question on new business. The CFO to handle claims, and we'll address the current one after that.
Yeah. Hi, Devanjan. So overall, as Mr. Krishnan mentioned, overall, new business grew at a 40% number. So largely, all channels grew in a similar manner. The direct digital and our own digital business grew better than the average. Agency channel was also in the similar number plus early 30s. And all other channels are also into a similar manner of growth.
Yeah i n terms of cohort-wise experience, so I would like to mention about combined ratio s o as it matures getting years ahead of it, claims ratio increased, but at the same time, there is drop in expense ratio s o combined ratio is a right metric to look at. In terms of combined ratio, if we just divide in new and renewal, so that renewal book has a better combined ratio compared to new book or retail channel, retail book, retail portfolio.
And in terms of your question on the proportion of new and renewal, as of H1 on the retail side, roughly 50% of our book was new, and the balance is renewal. With respect to proportion within three years, Devanjan, we don't disclose that at this point, but we can maybe offer and connect to see if we can help you depending on what your requirement is.
Sorry, sorry j ust to follow up on the second question now, you mentioned that your combined experience on the renewal book is better than the new book. This seems a little difficult to triangulate when I look at some of your listed peers, be it these other frontline players.
Just out of some sense, is it more of a function of the new business distribution mix and the layout that is prevalent for your business as of date, and is that the driving factor of your combined experience with the back book being better? And is that subject to change based on how the new business origination or the layout changed? Maybe not today, but maybe let's use this to segue to your question.
Probably when one of the things that I mentioned in terms of our approach to risk selection, I think the most important lever when it comes to building out sustainable loss ratios over the long term is having the portfolio built from the right mix of risks, right? So when Vishwanath says that our combined ratio on renewal is better than our new business combined ratios, it's fundamentally how the portfolio loss ratios play out over time.
And for the renewal book as a whole, it is the case that the combined ratios are lower because on the new business side, almost the entire expertise that the company has, including sales teams, etc., outlays, distribution, all of that. Means that there's a fairly heavy cost of acquiring a new customer, which is why the new business combined ratios do tend to be higher than the renewal combined ratios t hat is the case that we observed both here as well as in my prior experience, Devanjan.
Sorry, sir.
No, keep the renewal claims ratios at a target level so that the combined ratios are sustainable and deliver value over time.
Thank you.
And on the next question, the next question is from the line of Supratim Datta from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead.
Thank you, sir d efinitely. My next question is on the loss ratio basis i f I understand correctly, last year, first half, the retail loss ratio was 65%. Could you let me know what is the corresponding retail loss ratio under IFRS year first half? That would be helpful as the first one. But secondly, I wanted to understand based on some of the news, what we understand is the industry is going through another round of price hikes. I just wanted to understand how you are thinking of price hikes and what proportion of your portfolio will be repriced on the retail side over the next one year.
Lastly, on this 1/N regulation which has come in for long-term sales, I wanted to understand what proportion of your portfolio gets impacted due to this, and how does this impact the commissions that you were previously able to claim for your other distributors, including your regular and newer regimes? How does that change, and are those in negotiations already completed? So if you could give me some color on these two things, that would be very helpful.
Sure i 'll request Prayesh to take the first two questions, and the third I'll spread between Ankur and myself.
In terms of loss ratio for H1 for retail book, it is around 67.5%. As we discussed the seasonality of loss ratio in the first half for infection. In terms of pricing fees, we have taken pricing fees of around 10% for two products, which contribute around 25% in retail portfolio.
We currently have gained some pricing fees close to 10% for one or two products, which contribute around 10% of the portfolio. This is our practice to take smaller pricing fees, single digit or 10% max for all older mature products every year to take care of inflation and exchange. All other products other than these are new, and we don't warrant any pricing fees this financial year.
Okay. And this is the same thing too. So it will be around 20% if that's correct?
Yeah, that's right. So correct. So overall, 25% portfolio. We'll see increase of around 10%.
Okay a nd to your question on 1/N, I'll separate the response into two parts. One is the business part, which I'll request Ankur to cover. But as far as the accounting part is concerned, number one, on an IFRS basis, there is no change because there is full matching.
As far as the accounting system otherwise is concerned, all commissions do get matched to when the business gets booked, right? So from a commission standpoint, there is no change a s I mentioned earlier, fixed costs end up getting defrayed on a different denominator than has been historically the case. So there is a second-order impact there. It's not a material impact, but there is a second-order impact, which when we spoke to the regulator last week as well, they are cognizant of that.
And they are hopeful that there'll be definitionally, EOM recognizes that they changed the goal post during the financial year s o that's as far as the accounting part is concerned, to reallocate no impact on IFRS, which is the measure of economic value of the company. As far as EOM is concerned, there is a second-order impact because of the fixed cost commissions just get booked along with the business booking. As far as the business itself is concerned, Ankur?
Yeah, so on the business side, we have been talking to a lot of our partners, advisors, etc., to understand. There's definitely an income loss to some of the people for the current year. This is our arrangement agreements, and this is our discussions with them. There can be some we are comfortable that it should be in the similar mode of what it was earlier, but there may be some plus-minus here and there on that business, but largely, we are comfortable on that.
Got it a nd just to understand this, so currently, you will be booking under IFRS, you will be booking the first year's premium, right? And hence, the commission will also be corresponding to that one year's premium, or do you continue to pay?
No, no.
Got it. Got it. And this renegotiation of these terms with distribution centers being broadly completed, would that be a correct assumption?
I would say to a very large extent. There is a habit change, especially on the retail business with smaller distributors. We are working our way through it as we speak b ut as Ankur mentioned, by the end of this quarter, we believe that we'll be in a situation where the change has been absorbed, and we'll get back into our normal rhythm of business. To a very large extent, I think that the process of change and what it means to distribution, we've had those conversations, and we feel that we're arriving at a situation where business impact is going to be mitigated.
Understood. [audio distortion]
So by the time the year is done, we believe about in the mid-20s is where the overall proportion of business is the multi-year for us.
Got it. Understood. Understood. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, you may please press star and one on the touch-tone telephones if you wish to ask a question. The next question from the line of Varun P from Accorda Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi sir. Just had a follow-up question here in the tele network.
Yeah, please.
Is the fraud affected from the end of last year? Have you found any cases that are emerging out of certain hospitals, or was there any corrective action taken on that front, or did you come across?
Just about us, yeah.
Excuse me. As you would be aware, the provider network is a dynamic thing based on negotiation, based on patterns, whether it is about cost, whether it is about fraud, and more specifically abuse. We continue to look at it on a very regular basis and backed by data and analytics.
Based on those, we keep on taking actions of adding and sometimes pruning the list a little bit here and there. It's part of the dynamic overall policy of provider network building. Overall, titrating customer demand need to have access to healthcare facilities on a cashless basis, plus having the right provider in the network to deliver best quality services at appropriate cost.
You mean it's business as usual, nothing?
Correct.
Thanks.
Okay. Last question, ladies and gentlemen. You may press star and one. The next question from the line of Raju Madhu from Abhidispa. Please go ahead.
Hi. I just have one question. The DB rate number for October month, which is reported, is on one rate, and this is on full basis?
It is on a full basis. As you've seen, the industry and regulator, there is still an ongoing discussion on how to report the sales numbers because if you want to move to the new basis, then you have to adjust the prior year because the prior year is on, it's not on a like-for-like basis, so as of now, it's on a full basis.
Thank you.
Thank you. Participants, if you wish to ask questions, you may please press star and one. The next question from the line of Swarnabha Mukherjee from B&K Securities. Go ahead.
Sir, I have a broad industry-level query. I just wanted to get some of the data that we have from IITH in terms of the number of unique lives in the security retail space. I think the number is somewhere around 2.5 million crores in 2023. I don't have the numbers yet. I just wanted to understand what we report and 2023 w e've seen that number.
Please tell me, sir, if you have a sense on how [audio distortion] that is looking, what it's playing out, and in case there is movement, and given the fact that the events we heard from you and the listed players in the round of IPOs are again coming, so in that way, would it become the higher percentage of unique lives from IPOs or adding newer lives in the retail space? I wanted to know your thoughts on that, on where this trend has been in the retail space in life, and if it's still the whole, and are we going to continue to do that? And also the differences that we have been hearing that there is waiting as a problem in the industry.
[audio distortion] I wanted to understand from your side, your thoughts on this and what portion of your cash is being supported and in supporting also for cookies and back on the future claims of customers who will be supporting players who are onboarding customers who are likely at the end of the year taking a fresh start. I wanted to know your thoughts on this and maybe I can speak with you.
Sure. Look, I think both important questions. From a lives growth standpoint on retail, look, the way we think about it, and we'd request all of you to think about it in similar lines, is that this is very much called on for the retail business and a retail conversion advisory business.
In order to see lives growth at the industry level, as you can expect from retail branch banking or as you can expect from, let's say, retail stores, in order to see growth, there are two levers, right? One is same store sales growth, and the other is new store growth. So for growth to happen at the industry level, given that the business model today is by and large conversion-led.
The companies need to undertake CapEx programs. That could be adding offices, adding sales headcount, planning bank branches with more sales headcount, and so on and so forth, right? So at the industry level, whichever operator has embarked on a CapEx program, so for example, in our case, we've embarked on a significant CapEx program over the last four and a half years.
We have added 150-odd offices, grown our agency strength over the last four years from 50-odd thousand to a lakh and 60 w e have grown our bank partners from about 12 to about 21. Our own sales headcount has grown 4X in the last four years. So all of that has meant that we have experienced retail business growth and volume growth, The 40% new business growth number that I referred to on the sales headcount this financial year comes from a combination of value growth, which is roughly about 7%, 8%. The balance actually is lives growth.
So I would say rather than addressing the question at the industry level where if you have to find growth, then you have to look at what are the inputs that are going in it in terms of investments in stores, sales staff, brand building, etc.
Outside of that, I guess you have to look at the individual operators, whoever is making the required investment into the inputs for driving retail growth, you should logically see outcomes. And the case in point is Niva Bupa itself, where we have seen not just overall business growth in retail, but a good balanced combination of value as well as volume growth s o that's the answer to your first question. Inherently, our own assumption is that the growth trajectory on retail will continue to be a laggard of 17%-18% over the next five years.
We believe that the volume growth, which is in single digit for the industry, our assessment is so the 17%-18% will come from a mix of volume and value growth. Roughly, single digit inputs, maybe single digit volume growth and single digit value growth is our assessment a nd our own growth has given you the statistics as far as H1 of this year is concerned.
Now, to your question on porting, our point of view on porting is that we address it through the CE, ultimately, as you rightly pointed out, what matters is how do you adjust the economics to the time of onboarding a new customer, right? And like-like, so vintage to vintage, the claims experience is broadly the same.
So a 50-year quoted customer is the same as a 50-year fresh customer from claims experience standpoint. What matters is how do you adjust the economics at the time of onboarding the new risk and also making sure that you're careful about your risk selection.
So sorry, risk assessment and pricing. From a philosophy standpoint, our lifetime value approach addresses that w e adjust the economics. It falls into the appropriate grid as far as our incentivization and commissions are concerned so that we adjust for the difference in claims ratios in the first year. And as a proportion of our overall book, roughly that number is in the mid-20s. But from our standpoint, from an economic standpoint, we utilize in terms of the incentives that we pay both to our commissions as well as these incentives to our employees.
Just to clarify, when you say the proportion of the overall or on the fresh?
New business. On the fresh book.
On the fresh book.
Okay. And also, if I can kind of squeeze in some more questions. So I wanted to understand on your banker business, so what kind of is there a certain share of spending here, or is it pretty limited if it is? And how does the economics play out? So that's one question.
And the other one, i wanted to understand a little bit from your side on the general level cost of acquisition s o agencies, vis-à-vis bankers, and online platforms, how do you? what would be the order of cost of acquisition in this channel, and what would be your thoughts on adjusting your assumptions based on that? On the product mix, I'll request also progress and economics on the best vision of progress.
Sure. On the product mix on the banker side, it's a mix of both indemnity and some of the benefits as well. But largely, it is indemnity coverage we sell on the banker side of it. And if you look at our overall growth, it is a very good growth which is coming on the banker business coming today. And again, repeating, it's a mix of both indemnity plus benefit, but it is towards higher towards on the indemnity.
Yeah i n terms of economics, I would say we look at Combined Operating Ratio for both segments and channels. So our Loss Ratio and Expense Ratio, both commission and manpower, our own expenses direct and indirect should be expensed to us. So not a major difference in Combined Operating Ratio across channels, but one thing clear, digital is having better economics, lower Combined Ratio. That's the thing I can tell you.
Okay. I'll ask one quick question. So I just want to understand, you have given IFRS's basis combined ratio as well as loss ratio. Whereas with other of your peers, particularly insurers who are listed, you give them monthly basis. Just to understand the proportions, shall I take the loss ratio you have given on IFRS side and add the expense ratio that is provided by GAAP to arrive at a likelihood of increase for expense?
Actually, I would suggest you take our IFRS accounts as a whole. The reason is if you compare with, let's say, some other insurance companies, IFRS accounts not only adjust for loss ratio and expenses, it also normalizes for different growth rates. So if you take our expenses of IGAAP and take loss ratio of IFRS, that may not be consistent because if there is another company which has lower growth rate, so the expense would be lower in that case.
Our expense on IGAAP may seem to be higher, but IFRS normalizes that growth rate in terms of customer acquisition cost. So our request is to take our IFRS accounts and a lot of big companies publishing IFRS accounts to compare IFRS to IFRS and make a comparison.
This is very helpful. Thank you so much for your response.
Thank you. Faris, could you maybe press star and one to ask a question? This is the next question from the line of Blair Chen from Motilal Oswal Financial Services. Please go ahead.
Hi s o this was just a quick busines [audio distortion] There's a lot of talk from the Finance Ministry as well as the RBI too and the Federal Banks to slow down on insurance and claims billing, while some of it is directed towards lending. But is there any issue that you are witnessing, or do you expect that to be coming for the health insurance business as well?
That would be the first one. Second one, when you say that the digital business has a better profitability related to the profitability, does it also include? I thought on the digital business as a business, and so in that sense, where would be the profitability of that?
So thank you, Blair. Your question on the bank insurance, yes, both the Finance, the DFS, FM, as well as IRDA have created some level of discomfort with respect to insurance. My understanding is that a lot of that stems from the life insurance industry to do with mis-selling and customer complaints around that line of business.
Because when I look at, one, if you look at the health insurance business overall per se, in the context of banks, it is still very, very small. SBI's, HDFC's, life insurance business is many times the size of health insurance business as far as banks are concerned c ertainly, that's the case with all of the bank partners that we work with. So yes, our understanding is that it is to do with complaints on the life side.
Also, when I examine our own complaints with respect to the policies that we've implemented through our bank partners, there is actually no difference in terms of customer complaints, specifically around mis-selling on banks versus any of our other channels s o that's as far as the health insurance is concerned.
But yes, there have been these comments across policymakers across the spectrum. Our belief is it's about making the business more sustainable, especially around addressing complaints around mis-selling. Your question on digital, so when Vishwanath referred to digital, it is both.
What we do with digital partners is like Policybazaar t hey are by far the biggest partner, the biggest player in the industry as far as digital is concerned t hey are categorized as a broker. It also includes our direct-to-consumer business. In the ranking, because there is no tail as far as our own direct-to-consumer business is concerned, it is the most attractive channel as far as the company is concerned.
Just one quick clarification [audio distortion] Basically, is there a cause of concern that the indemnity does not only concern selling at the company price? In terms of benefits.
Your line is not very clear.
Is this better?
This is much better, so please proceed.
Yeah. I'm saying on the bank business, the indemnity does have to pose any risk from the RBI side, and I think that is a concern.
So if you look at the overall proportion of personal accidents and travel as far as the company is concerned, that's 2.2% on the overall company. And even within banks, as Ankur mentioned, I would say to a very large extent, it is indemnity a nd also the benefit-based, again, we are a relatively small player, and the benefit-based would also include products like daily cash, which are essentially hospitalization products.
Lastly, on the One-by-N policy, how would you say the claims service? I think this part is kind of our business has been hurt a little bit h ow would that change?
Okay. So we have not reached that position. So currently, our treaties are in place, and as the treaties, we are ceding the entire premium for, let's say, three-year, five-year, two-year terms. So when those treaties come for renewal, maybe around March, we will negotiate with the insurers.
From an accounting perspective, the NWP that you provide after reinsurance reduction, that would reduce spend. So you would start reporting GWP, say, on a monthly basis. Okay? But your reinsurance would be spent entire business. Is that what you're saying? Is that true to you?
Yeah s o currently, that is the case. This claim has to emerge. We're in touch with the reinsurer also. I don't think it's a surprise applicable to them. [audio distortion] So we're in touch with them.
[audio distortion] Got it. Thanks. Thanks.
Thank you. So if there are no further questions, I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Krishnan Ramachandran for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Again, I'd like to thank all of you for your questions. As I stated at the very start, we're very, very excited about the health insurance opportunity. We have been delivering industry-leading growth as a company, and I do believe that with the combination of strong shareholders, a very high-quality team that's been executing very well, we will continue to build a business model that's sustainable and delivers value to all stakeholders as we move along t hank you once more for your time and your questions.
Thank you. On behalf of Niva Bupa Health Insurance, I conclude this conference. Thank you all for joining us. You may now.