Ladies and gentlemen, good day, welcome to the Star Health and Allied Insurance Company Ltd Q4 and FY 2026 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Miss Devyanshi Dave from Adfactors PR investor relations team. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. From the senior management, we have with us Mr. Anand Roy, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Amitabh Jain, Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Himanshu Walia, Executive Director and Chief Marketing Officer, Mr. Nilesh Kambli, Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Aneesh Srivastava, Chief Investment Officer, and Mr. Sombit Bhattacharya, Head of Investor Relations. Before we begin the conference call, I would like to mention that some of the statements made during the course of today's call may be forward-looking in nature, including those related to the future financials and operating performance, benefits and synergies of the company strategies, future opportunities and growth of the market of the company services. Further, I would like to mention that some of the statements made in today's conference may involve risks and uncertainties. Thank you, and over to you, Mr. Roy.
Thank you, thank you so much, good morning to everyone. Good morning, thank you for joining Star Health's earnings call for the fourth quarter and for the full financial year FY 2025, 2026. FY 2026 was a year of strategic recalibration for us, focused towards strengthening our performance across the core operating levers, which is distribution, maintaining a strict underwriting discipline, claims management, and high focus on customer experience and operating efficiency. We have maintained that given the inherent characteristics of our business, the impact of all these measures would pro-progressively manifest through the P&L. Team Star Health has executed and continues to execute the strategic blueprint with consistency and conviction.
As we report our results for Q4 and for the full fiscal FY 2026, the green shoots of our operating turnaround in the previous quarters is now more pronounced in our underlying metrics, which I'll be taking you through in today's call. As I start by outlining the broader sectoral context and ecosystem trends which is shaping the business environment of our industry. Ind AS health insurance has entered what we describe as a structurally advanced growth phase. The confluence of policy support, consumer intent, and sustainable demand drivers is creating a very compelling backdrop towards a multi-decadal growth opportunity for the category. The GST exemption on retail health insurance, a landmark policy intervention by the Government of India, has already demonstrated significant impact. Consumer intent is rising, actualized through category growth trends. We believe that retail health represents the most consequential value pool in the Indian insurance sector.
With scale driven by deeper penetration amongst new to insurance customers, aligned with the national ambition of universal health coverage for all by 2047. Reflecting this momentum, our new to insurance customers accounted for 94% of fresh additions in H2 FY 2026, as compared to an already healthy 92% in H1 of FY 2026. At industry level, retail health insurance premiums have grown by 30.2% YoY in H2 of FY 2026, significantly outpacing the broader non-life industry growth, which came at 11.2% YoY during the same period. For the full fiscal, non-life insurance premiums grew by 9.3% YoY, while retail health grew close to 20% YoY. Forward-looking reforms outlined by the regulator are supportive of long-term growth and sectoral development.
We welcome the IRDAI's formal mandate on implementation of Indian Accounting Standards from April 1, 2026. At Star Health, we have always believed it to be the most relevant framework and have aligned all our business and investment decisions towards these principles. Our Ind AS financials have been reviewed by our joint statutory auditors for multiple quarters now, and we enter the Ind AS regime from a position of readiness. Against this backdrop, Star Health has remained focused on maintaining leadership in retail health insurance and compounding a durable value additive franchise anchored on our four pillars, which is a risk-first approach, a consistent focus on ROE, a customer-centric execution, and a digital-first mindset. Let me take you through our quarterly performance highlights. Coming to our operating performance for the quarter.
In line with our reporting convention in previous quarters, we will state our business numbers on NEP basis for quarter four and for the full financial year FY 2026. Going forward from next financial year, you would refer to reported one by NEP measures for both business and growth. Following are the highlights of our performance for Q4 FY 2026. Fresh retail growth on NEP basis for the quarter was 38% YoY. Fresh growth was driven by both value and volume as the number of retail health policies expanded by 11% YoY. New to insurance mix was 94% on fresh premium basis compared to 90% last year for the same quarter. Overall GWP increased 17% YoY on NEP basis to INR 6,259 crores for the quarter.
Our Ind AS underwriting profit for the quarter was INR 186 crores, an increase of 200% YoY over INR 62 crores in Q4 of FY 2025. This was driven by an improvement in combined ratio by 2.7%, which was 98.4% in quarter four of FY 2025 and came to 95.7% in quarter four of FY 2026. As in the previous quarters, our loss ratio improvement continued for the third successive quarters with a 4% improvement from 69.2% in quarter four of FY 2025 to 65.2% in quarter four of FY 2026. The retail loss ratio improved 3% YoY to 64.8% in this particular quarter four FY 2026.
Our retail loss ratios have improved by 0.8%, 1% and 3% YoY during Q2, Q3, and Q4 of FY 2026 respectively, underscoring progressive improvement every quarter. The geopolitical tension-induced correction in the equity markets led to a INR 558 crores mark-to-market loss during the quarter. As a result, we reported a loss of INR 42 crores for quarter four FY 2026 compared to a profit of INR 270 crores during quarter four of FY 2025. The headline statements for the full year FY 2026, the full year numbers are as follows. The fresh retail business grew on NEP basis at 37% YoY, driven again both by value and volume as the number of retail health policies grew 8% for the full year.
Our new to insurance mix, which we believe, is focused on the quality of business, was 93% of fresh premium as compared to 89% for the last fiscal. Overall GWP increased 16% YoY on NEP basis to INR 20,369 crores. This is a very important milestone for us to cross INR 20,000 crores in GWP as we complete 20 years of establishment of Star Health in this calendar year. As against a full year loss of INR 165 crores during FY 2025, underwriting profit turned positive at INR 206 crores for FY 2026, a positive delta of INR 371 crores. This was driven by improvement in combined ratio by 2.3% from 101.1% in FY 2025 to 98.8% in FY 2026.
The improvement in combined ratio was further driven by improvement in both loss ratio and expense ratio. The loss ratio has improved by 2% to 68.7%. Further, the retail loss ratio improved by 1% - 68.2%. Our Ind AS expense ratio also improved by 30 basis points to 30.1% for the full year. The improvement in expense ratio reflects disciplined cost management and operating leverage, notwithstanding an absolute impact of around INR 80 crores due to the factors such as GST and labor code. On a full year basis, the mark-to-market loss was INR 127 crores. Full year PAT increased 16% YoY from INR 787 crores in last financial year to INR 911 crores in FY 2026.
To smoothen the reported profitability against the short-term mark-to-market volatility, we are adopting a concept of normalized investment yield pegged at 8% on annualized basis. Going forward, we will consistently refer to this basis to depict an appropriate reflection of the underlying profitability, excluding the short-term fluctuations that may happen. Under this normalized framework, our PAT increased 45% YoY in FY 2026 to INR 1,222 crores, and ROE expanded from 10.1% in FY 2025 to 13.1% in FY 2026. Progressively improving operating performance in sequential quarters by disciplined execution and recalibrated strategies have resulted in turnaround of our underwriting results. Coming to the business outcomes, we continue to build a very diversified granular retail franchise focused on ROE-centric growth through preferred geographies and segments and channels which meet our profitability thresholds.
Notwithstanding all of the underwriting, you know, discipline above, we have maintained a category leadership in retail health segment with market share at 31.3% in FY 2026. Our strategic choices aligned with the priorities as outlined above have translated into tangible benefits as evidence through the underwriting profitability improvements. Our proprietary distribution channels, which are the agency channel and the digital D2C, now contribute over 90% of the retail business and it positions us to deepen the insurance penetration beyond the urban areas with emphasis on new to insurance customers. We will continue to focus on our preferred segments, which scale faster with significantly higher growth rates compared to the national average. On the portfolio management and recalibration strategies, we have undertaken disciplined recalibration of the portfolio anchored towards improvement of risk-adjusted outcomes.
Progressive improvements in loss ratios have been driven through multiple levers: analytics-led pricing, strengthened underwriting, portfolio optimization towards preferred segments, and further improvements in fraud, waste, and abuse management, and institutionalization of a wellness-based consumer ecosystem. Our home healthcare and telemedicine capabilities witnessed significant growth in utilization, enhancing our capabilities to manage fever and infection related cases in a home-based setting, therefore, improving the customer convenience as well. Our consumer focused metrics continue to demonstrate improvement trends. The retail claim settlement ratio increased by 3% - 92% for the full year. Our renewal ratio on full year basis increased by 2% - 99%. The company level NPS improved by 8 points to 62 at March 31st, 2026. Our retail book demonstrates a best in class grievance ratio benchmarked with other standalone health insurers.
On the digital side of things, the technology investments that Star Health is making are improving the productivity and service outcome with digital embedded across the value chain through platform modernization, workflow automation, and straight-through processing, and also enhanced deployment of analytics and AI. Acquisition and onboarding are now predominantly digitalized with 95% of all fresh premiums are collected digitally. Our mobile application, the customer app, has over 14 million downloads, playing a pivotal role in driving customer engagement, acting as a primary interface across the policy lifecycle. Monthly active users of the app have scaled past the 1.5 million mark with desirable levels of self-service adoption through claims intimations and renewals. Ongoing investment in experience design and self-service enablements will continue to enhance adoption with integrated wellness and preventive care features enabling sustained non-transactional engagement as well.
And finally, in conclusion, to summarize, our strategic growth path remains centered on building a very granular retail franchise supported by our unmatched operating scale. We have 30% + category market share. We have 2.8 crores lives who are covered with us, 15,000 + hospital partners, 8 lakhs + agents moving towards 1 million agents in the next two years, 900 + offices and 75 + partnerships. Heading into FY 2027, our priorities remain unchanged. That is to deliver strategic objectives like customer first approach, growth through proprietary channels, and focus on preferred segments. We remain confident that disciplined execution at scale will translate into sustainable risk first balance of growth and ROE. Thank you for your continued trust in Star Health. And with that, we are now open to take your questions. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We will 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 will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Our first question comes from the line of Supratim Datta from Jefferies Group. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks a lot for the opportunity, a very good morning to everyone. See, the loss ratio improvement has been a, you know, a welcome change and a positive surprise for everybody. Just, you know, I wanted to, you know, and my questions were on this bit and, you know, the outlook here going ahead. See, the key drivers here has been, one, the reduction in group health business and the improvement on the retail loss ratios. However, the retail loss ratios are still above what, you know, the level that you operated at in 2023, 2024, which was closer to 65%-66%. It's currently somewhere around 68%. Wanted to understand what is the pathway of this 68% retail loss ratio going down to 65%-66%.
Is that, you know, something that is possible or, you know, has something structurally changed which does not make it possible? If it's possible, you know, what would be the pathway to that, you know, loss ratio improvement? That's the first bit. Secondly, this year the seasonal claims, you know, around vector-borne diseases was lower, you know, as compared to last year. As you, as we go into 2027 and if there is a recurrence of, you know, seasonal claims going up, you know, should we then expect, you know, how as a company Star Health is looking at, you know, mitigating that? You know, that would be the second question that I have. You know, thank you.
Thanks, Supratim . Amitabh here. We had a better than expected quarter four, as you would have seen in the numbers. Now, you know, this business, as we all know, has cycles, and there could be, you know, cycles of frequency or severity going up in particular quarters, and we have seen that over the years. Whatever series of actions we have done over the last one and a half years, okay, I think we are well-placed to see a continuous improvement in our loss ratios going forward. Specifically talking about, you know, dealing with the kind of cyclical events that happen.
As stated by Anand in his address, we have been working on three specific areas on prevention and wellness, starting from telemedicine, home healthcare and, you know, condition management programs. These are three areas that we've been investing on. This year this has scaled up significantly. You know, we had seen overall 4x- 5x jump over the year. In fact, quarter four saw almost a 9x jump in the consumption of these services. The idea is that, you know, we are able to provide a solution to our customers when they need in terms of fever, infectious diseases, gastro cases, which helps them manage things at home or through a telemedicine consultation. While we service them well, we also keep the cost of servicing low.
That's the approach we've taken, and I think it's proceeding in the right direction.
Thanks a lot, Amitabh. Could you just quantify, you know, what proportion of your policyholders or, you know, people who are claiming are using this telemedicine service now versus last year?
We had more than 90,000 calls for the year, for specifically the calls that came for home health care. Eventually, the numbers that utilized home health care were much lower, but the telemedicine calls were more than 90,000. Pure telemedicine calls were in excess of another 40,000. That's the kind of usage we are already seeing.
Understood. That's very clear. Thanks a lot for the opportunity.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Prayesh Jain from Motilal Oswal. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, everyone, and congratulations on a good set of numbers. Just a few questions from my side. Firstly, Anand, you spoke about growth, right? You know, while the industry has been seeing a very strong growth on the retail side, ours is still growth lower than the industry. Obviously the base kind of plays a role, but, you know, the gap that used to exist even, say, a few years back, that gap still exists. You know, the other companies have also scaled up, reasonably well over the last couple of years. You know, how do you see the growth panning out for us, you know, in the next couple of years, in given the tailwinds that we are seeing from the industry?
Yeah. Prayesh, thanks for that question. See, I think, over the last two, three quarters, we have been articulating that growth is important, but for us, quality of growth is more important, and that's what we are focusing on. If you look at the quality of growth that we are building a franchise for, you know, which will be sustainable in the future, the new to insurance mix of the company has been the main focus. We are not so much focused on the portability side of business. Within the geographies also, we have taken some decisions on going slow in certain markets, as you're aware.
I think we are not comparing exactly with what the others are doing, but we are more focused on what is our company strategy and objectives, which is to have a sustainable high-teens growth and a sustainable, hopefully mid-teen to high-teen ROEs. I think these are the two major focus areas, and that's what we are trying to chase.
Got that. Secondly was on loss ratio, right? We, you know, the fresh growth has picked up momentum in the last in H2 of FY 2026. To a certain extent, that is definitely a reflection in terms of improvement of loss ratio. I think the As NEP unwinds out of this fresh growth, do you think that the loss ratio improvement can still hold up for, you know, another few quarters before the impact of this new book starts coming in from the loss ratio perspective also?
Absolutely. Already there's an increase in the earnings, you know, on the fresh retail business, and that's improved the portfolio mix. The benefits of that as well as the repricing that we've been doing on the portfolio, both of them will play out in terms of a sustenance of this, you know, this LR on an annual basis. You know, there can be fluctuations in the quarter, but I think overall we should see an improvement.
Got that. Just a last bit on the commission side. You know, in last couple of quarters, we've seen a significant improvement on commission ratio. You know, I would assume that the fresh growth would obviously be at a higher commission, but some bit of benefit would have come in from the senior citizens commission adjustment that you've done. Could you still explain more as to, you know, is there any other lever that is helping the commission ratios or it's just the senior citizen part? To that, what is the contribution of senior citizens, say, in FY 2026 versus FY 2025?
Senior citizen contributes around 20% for portfolio, fresh. Yes, I mean, along with senior citizen, you know, we have been taking various measures to control the outgo in terms of the procurement cost or sourcing cost. Some bit of impact is there because, you know, the fresh growth has been higher. Senior citizen is one factor, and the other initiative that we have taken is ensuring that, you know, the productivity of our sales managers also improved a lot. All these initiatives are helping us to improve the commission ratio.
The mix was same in FY 2025 also, 20% in FY 2025 and FY 2026, both it's 20%?
Yeah, it's largely in that range, but this initiative on reduction in senior citizen commission was effective April FY 2025, so it's effective only for 2025, 2026.
Got that. Got that. Thanks. That's helpful.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Swarnabha Mukherjee from 360 ONE Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thank you for the opportunity, and congrats on a good set of numbers. Three questions from my side, sir. First, wanted to understand what is the status in terms of price hikes. If you could give some color in terms of what proportion, you know, in what products you are doing. How much would be the proportion in terms of GWP, and what is the quantum of price hike in an average? If that would be very helpful. Given that, sir, you highlighted that in the opening remark that there is both value and volume led growth in fresh, I just wanted to understand the same from the renewal side also. How would have things transpired in terms of value and volume, how should we think about the growth numbers?
If you could also highlight, you know, the proportion of fresh in your mix. Is it about a quarter of your overall GWP? Would that be the right assessment? That's one. Second is, sir, wanted to understand the retention ratio seems to have come up a little bit from last quarter. What is playing out there, if you could highlight. Thirdly, in terms of the AEP growth. Sir, we are more or less now for multiple quarters growing at a fairly steady rate. Just wanted to understand that why is AEP growth still lagging the GWP growth? How should we think about it?
Given that, you know, the momentum that is there in fresh business, et cetera, when do we expect the AEP growth to pick up and come to the 15% kind of, range? That would be my question, sir.
Swarnabha, let me take some of those questions and I'll request my colleagues to pitch in wherever needed. The price hike which you mentioned is, you know, our strategy has been that we will take an annual price increase in all our products, and we will continue to follow that strategy. Of course, within that we will see how to be optimized so that, you know, customers are given benefits based on their own behavior in terms of wellness and health conditions and so on and so forth. That we will continue to do. On the renewal side, you have asked about value and volume.
I'm happy to tell you that Star Health, with the kind of scale that we operate, we have the best persistence in the industry, you know, both on volume and as well as on value. I think, on volume basis, we have seen, you know, almost close to 86%, 87% retention in terms of volume. We believe that there is scope to improve further, but we are still the best in the industry. On the AEP growth, see, I think broadly because of the long-term policy sales, which is now becoming the order of the day, most of the consumers are preferring to go for long-term policies, which is, I believe, good for all ecosystem, all the stakeholders, both from consumer point of view, from the distributors, as well as from the insurance company's point of view.
I think that's why the AEP growth will have a lag effect, but it will catch up in the upcoming quarters.
Right, sir. Just a follow-up on this, that, given that, you know, the fresh growth, as you mentioned, is around 35%-37% and the volume growth is, I think, 8%-9%, which you had mentioned in your opening remarks. Would it be fair to assume that going forwards also, like, I mean, earlier we used to highlight about a 50% volume and 50% value led growth. Now we'll take consistent price hike, and maybe this will be the industry phenomenon as well. Would it be slightly lopsided towards value growth? Would that be a fair expectation going ahead?
In the NEP basis reporting, yes. Once we move to one by NEP basis reporting, I think it will kind of normalize to some extent. Yes, this distortion is coming because of the long-term policy sales, which is now the preferred segment for the customers.
Understood, sir. Is the retention ratio coming up, is this also related to the long-term sales? If you, if you could, maybe, you know, give some color on that.
Yeah. See, Swarnabha, you know, Q3 was a very unique phenomenon. The GST cut happened in September. What happened is a lot of people waited for the month of September, and they renewed the policies in Q3. Q4 is traditionally a very big quarter, and we see some spillover coming to Q1. On a yearly basis, in fact, we have improved the volume-based retention by 1.5 %. There was slight anomaly in Q3 and Q4 because of the GST cut which happened in Q3. I mean, September was the announcement, and people waited in September and did the renewals within the grace period in Q3.
Okay. Okay. Understood. Very helpful. Thank you so much and all the best.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Dipanjan Ghosh from Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, sir. A few questions from my side. You know, if you were to look at your YoY growth in, you know, the volume of claims or the value of claims that you have paid, just wanted to understand if you were to break it between inflation for similar treatments, again, I mean, to the extent possible, versus, let's say, claims frequency or incidence. I mean, how would that trajectory have fared in FY 2026 versus, let's say, the past few years or historically witnessed averages? The second question is, you know, now that you have started seeing improvement in your retail claims ratio on a YoY basis, and the quantum of YoY change seems to be improving in terms of, you know, the claims ratio going down.
Some of it is obviously new business, but, you know, if you can give some color on how the back book is trending, and especially some of your vintage products which historically have witnessed some pressure, that will be really great. Any qualitative feedback on that? The third question is on the agency front. I mean, you mentioned that you want to touch almost 10 lakh agents over the next two years. Now, once you reach a certain size and scale in terms of the proprietary channel and given the competitive pressure, what sort of strategies around ring fencing, activation, improving productivity or curtailing or controlling commission payouts in those channels? I mean, what are the strategies? I have one question on the regulatory front, but maybe I can ask it after this three.
So on the first question, for the whole year, the frequency and severity as a whole has been, we've been able to sort of manage it in the high single digits, which is the trend that has been there for us for some time now. If you were to talk about the quality of the renewal book, you know, that is seeing a consistent improvement in LR given our pricing strategy that we've been following over the last one and a half years. So on both those, you know, things are looking better. We believe that this as a strategy will continue, you know, as far as the pricing of the book is concerned, you know.
We're expecting to reprice almost 80% of the book between what we started from Q4 going up to Q1 this year. That will show up in the earnings going forward.
Uh,
On the agency.
Yeah, on the agency side, we are confident of getting to 1 million in the next two years. We, we maintain this, that we will be adding 1 lakh agents, you know, every year for the next many years. If you look at our agent productivity, even for this year, you know, it has improved by about 37% on fresh and overall 18% on total business. This is coming on the back of, you know, the upskilling of the agents that we do on a regular basis and our L&D transformation, which is led by the technology solutions that we are providing to our agents. We continue to believe that this will continue to improve.
As far as the ring fencing of the agents is concerned, we have best in class, you know, offerings for our agents, which we believe, will continue to maintain stickiness of our agents.
Got it. One last question from my side on the regulatory front. Till date, we are under a company level Expense of Management. While there have been multiple discussions on line of business with EoM, just wanted to understand that when you talk to the regulator, are they cognizant of the fact that there is a natural arbitrage between SAHI and multiliners in terms of Expense of Management on the retail health business, and if there is any consideration on that front?
Dipanjan , what was the arbitrage? Please explain.
I mean, you know, for example, you guys can operate at maximum of 35% and your book is almost entirely retail health, right? Whereas there is a possibility of cross-subsidization at the multiline channels, in terms of them able to operate at a higher EoM, specifically for the retail health line.
Okay, okay. No, I think, I think, you know, broadly, we await IRDAI's guidance on the EoM. There has been some data that the regulator has asked, which all of us have supplied. You know, you will appreciate that we have been a very disciplined company in terms of EoM. We are probably the only company in this space operating within the current guidelines, and we continue to invest a lot to improve our expenses, operating ratios better. We'll await that. I don't want to give any comment now, but when it comes, I'm sure it'll be fair to all the players.
Sure. Thanks, Anand.
Most importantly fair to the consumers. Yeah.
Sure. Maybe just one small follow-up. You know, you mentioned your claim severity is around high single digit. I mean, hypothetically speaking, if your price hikes are, let's say, a percentage or a few percentage points higher than your claim severity, is that going to be a strategy to kind of bring this claims ratio down from, let's say, whatever, 68%, 69% to, let's say, somewhere around 65%? I mean, is that something you guys would be focusing on? That's all from my side.
Well, obviously, severity, claim severity is a function of, you know, higher quality of treatments and, you know, the kind of disease profiles we are seeing nowadays. Pricing of insurance products will always be a factor of that. To maintain our margins, we may have to take a slightly higher than that. There are efforts continuously being done to manage severity better in terms of, you know, discussing with our hospitals, having more preferred partners. Obviously, we have a target combined ratio under which we want to operate. To that extent, we will keep taking our, you know, strategies aligned.
Thanks, Anand and the team, and, all the best.
Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Sanketh Godha from Avendus Spark. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. Sorry, Anand and Amitabh, it's the same question probably in a different way. The loss ratio improvement honestly was a positive surprise, very positive surprise. If you really want to attribute a major reason, is it the large part of the improvement happened in the renewal book? And actually the new contribution would have played a role, but the bigger delta came from the renewal book because of your that cohort based or pricing strategy which you adopted last maybe five quarters back.
That is getting reflected in the numbers or, and therefore, if that strategy was useful and if you try to implement to the entire book, is it fair to say that the renewal book delta will be the biggest change to bring the loss ratio improvement going ahead. That was my question. I basically, I just wanted to understand the breakup or waterfall of the loss ratio improvement, whether it is new renewal or severity or hospital management. Just if you can give a bit color there, it will be useful.
Sanketh, I think you have answered the question yourself. It's a sum of all parts, right? It's not one can lay a finger on any one particular item. It's everything that you mentioned. It's improvement in the renewal book, the pricing strategy, the quality of sourcing of new business, the selection of geographies and profile of customers. And of course, over and above that, most importantly, having a very, very strong FWA, fraud, waste, and management, you know, initiatives. So it's a combination of everything. I think, you know, we operate at a scale which probably others are not able to do, and that's why we, you know, the kind of data and the kind of, you know, analytics we bring to the table to manage this is little better than what maybe others can provide.
It's a combination of everything. Amitabh, do you want to add it?
As far as if you want to specifically ask, the improvement has been across the renewal book and the fresh book. It's not simply about one aspect of the business. Two, the overall impact, specifically in quarter four has been the improvement in frequency that we have seen, over the last year. That cuts across, you know, the entire book. It doesn't play out only for one thing. All of this has been enabled because of the continuous, you know, efforts we've been taking on the telemedicine and home health care front, along with, all other prevention measures. This is something that is playing across the book.
Understood, Amit. Amit, just on this frequency part you said, is it that it was in general lower than actually usually it is or this frequency coming down is more structural because of the telemedicine and all the measures what you just told, is playing out?
Yeah. It is lower than what we expected and the fact that both our interventions have played. It's a mix of both.
Which means that incrementally the loss ratio maybe if not 68%, 66%, 67% kind of a number can be achievable, given the intervention measures what you are taking from next year point of view?
The point is that this business we need to discuss in terms of a longer period, we can't just focus on a particular quarter, right? Whatever changes and series of interventions we have done are for the improvement of the book in the longer term. There can be cyclical, you know, ups and downs in a quarter or, you know, here and there. Fundamentally, what we're trying to improve is the quality of the book, the quality of sourcing, the way we are managing our claims, the way we're dealing with fraud, waste, and abuse, disproportionately focus on, you know, managing the claims that can be managed at home or through telemedicine and invest on wellness.
Under-
You know, as a big, part of our strategy.
One small data keeping question, maybe two basically. If you can give your INR 4, 5, 6, 7 crores of fresh premium breakup into long term and annual plans, how it was compared to last year. Maybe if you can give that number both on NOP and premium basis will be useful. Lastly, in the fresh premium, you said Anand, that or even it's there in the presentation, that 93% of the business is fresh to insurance customer, which means indirectly 7% of the customer are porting. That is on NOP.
If you can give a bit of color on premium to that 7%, if it is porting led, in the fresh premium, how much is on that premium, INR 4, 5, 6, 7 crores?
No, Sanketh, the number is on GWP, not on NOP, on the new to insurance. It's on fresh premium. Okay?
Okay.
I'm not even saying that we will not do portability. What I'm saying is that we will be calibrated in making it a risk first approach, and where we feel that there is opportunity, we will go for that. As far as the breakups of long term and all that is concerned, we will give it to you separately.
Okay. Okay, Anand. Thanks. Thanks for the answers.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Avinash Singh from Emkay Global. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Congratulations on great set of numbers. A couple of questions. I mean, the first one more around, you know, that a lot of kind of, you know, the actions you have taken on multiple parts of your business, including the repricing of portfolio and all. Now, of course, the BAU based repricing or price increase you will continue. Do you see, I mean, the way, you know, that medical inflation on your claims experience are going forward, I mean, any sort of a major repricing need is at least not there in FY 2027 and it will be normal, I mean, whatsoever single-digit or whatsoever possible typical, you know, the price increase.
Is that current prices sustainable with the kind of a claim inflation to settle you in your desired combined ratio zone? The second on the regulatory side, of course, I guess you briefly touched upon the expected commission regulation to be out in near future. On this Bima Sugam that finally seems to be kind of making some progress. I mean, what's your evaluation? I mean, is it going to be kind of augmenting your sourcing or it is more going to be, you know, the renewal and maintenance? On that front, is the regulator looking at the product, whether it's a new or renewal to be priced differently on this platform?
I mean, because this, you know, this platform is being projected as a direct to customer and for customer only. Is there some sort of, you know, rebate or discount that the insurer has to offer to the customer on this platform if the customer is buying new or renewing the policy? Thanks.
Avinash, first of all, thank you for the good wishes. See, over the last five to six quarters, we have been taking this pricing corrections across all our products. As you rightly put it, we will be taking this in the future as well. We do not foresee any particular change in the strategy or any increase that is beyond normal. We do not see that. We continue to maintain the current strategy, we believe that that should be more than sufficient for us to maintain the target combined ratio that we have. That is one. As far as the Bima Sugam platform is concerned, I think the project is more focused on giving a platform to the consumers for affordable insurance plans.
Obviously, it will not be zero cost, there may be lower cost. It is also a service-oriented platform for both having all insurance policies under one roof in terms of life insurance, health insurance, and all normal general insurance products, so that the consumer can have one platform to do all the services themselves. I think this is a good initiative. We are totally supportive of that. We are also a shareholder of the platform. We hope that, you know, it is successful and we'll see. We'll keep you updated as we get more information.
A quick one. Looking back, this EoM regulation that had a kind of a March 26th as a deadline. What is the regulator's view now in terms of-- because, I mean, a number of players will be non-compliant. What are you hearing? Of course, you are in the compliant bucket, but across the board, because eventually when this new EoM regulation was launched on 1st April 2023, I mean, there was a deadline. There were kind of amendments and companies had to give a glide path how they are exiting on March 26th with those kind of limits, the 30% or 35% limit, depending upon the class. What is the regulator's view now for the non-compliant, you know, companies? Because this kind of a will set that, okay, how in future the companies will take regulatory awards.
I mean, if even with a three-year deadline, if there is no sort of, you know, action or a nudge from regulator for the non-compliance, I mean, it's very difficult to believe that, I mean, in future regulations will be taken that seriously.
Sir, this is a very difficult question for me to answer. I think I'll give it a pass.
No worries. Thanks. Bye.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Rishi Jhunjhunwala from IIFL. Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks for the opportunity. Two questions. firstly, sir, you've talked about continuing with the price hikes in your portfolio. Given the sensitivity around GST cut being passed on to the consumers and government indicating they are keeping a close eye on that, how do you think, you know, you'll be able to manage price hike in the near term, which is not overlapping or compensating for some of the GST loss? I mean, it optics, I understand, but do you believe this will be easier to do than how it looks?
See, Rishi, the pricing strategies are all done beforehand in the sense that pricing strategies are based on product performance. It has nothing to do with GST. GST benefits are fully passed on to the consumers. The pricing strategies of the company is based on the performance of the product in terms of the loss ratios. On that basis only we are taking the price increases. I believe that it is, you know, should be fair to all the stakeholders.
Understood, sir. The other question is now.
It is based on fully defined actuarial principles, and I don't think that there should be any resistance there. Yeah.
Fair enough, sir. Thank you. The other question is, on, it's been now seven, eight months of, you know, GST exemption related tailwinds that we have seen. You know, in your portfolio where customers are returning for renewals, out of the INR 118 rupees, say, of, you know, cash outflow that they used to do for a INR 100 rupees premium, can you give some sense of, you know, how much have we been able to retain in the form of maybe a higher sum assured and as a result, higher premium or attach more riders so that INR 118 inflow actually doesn't go down completely to INR 100. Just want to understand, you know, how much incremental demand we have received from the returning customers.
Good question, Rishi. If you look at our renewal retention numbers for the current financial year.
There's a 300 bps improvement in terms of GWP, right? That clearly reflects that the customers are now opting for higher sum insured, and they are also willing to, you know, opt for riders which are beneficial for them. And in terms of NOP numbers, it's a 100 bps improvement. It goes to show that the, you know, there is significant improvement in the back book.
How does this look for our distributors?
Yeah, distributors are pretty much happy because the growth has been upwards of 50% ever since GST has been announced, right? Their income levels have gone up.
Understood. Okay. Thank you, Amit.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Nidhesh Jain from Investec. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity, and congratulations for a good set of numbers. First question is on NEP mix. If you can share what is the share of new and renewal for FY 2026 and FY 2025 on NEP basis.
See, NEP basis, as you mentioned, you know, a good proportion of the long-term business is coming in. It's in the range of 2% difference. You know, it has been 80/20, and it has changed by 100 -1 50 basis points on premium basis.
Next year also this ratio should further increase because as these long-term policies business will get accrued in NEP. Is that the right understanding?
Yes, it will, it will continue to improve. That's right.
Secondly, we have seen a good improvement in group health claims ratio. I think we have been defocusing on that segment for last one year. What is the strategy on that segment going forward? Do we expect growth to come back in that segment?
See, we've taken a very recalibrated strategy, right, at the beginning of FY 2026, and that has played out really well, which reflects in our loss ratio, right? We've been focusing on our SME segment, which for the current financial year, has contributed to 78% of our overall business, which was 58% in FY 2025. We continue to maintain this strategy, and we are absolutely clear that we will go behind businesses which are profitable in nature. SME is one of those businesses, and we have taken growth rate targets in line with the overall objective of the organization.
Sure. Third question is on our growth in retail segment. If you look at Q4, the growth in retail is around 19% versus industry growth is close to 29%. There is a decent gap in our retail growth and industry growth. How are we thinking about this gap, let's say, from a medium-term perspective? Because the industry has got benefited from GST cut, and that benefit probably will come into base in H2. When industry is growing at steady state of, say 17%-18%, how should we see this gap between our growth and industry growth panning out?
See, you know, at Star Health, we are completely aligned on profitable growth, right? Our market share has sustained at 31% for the full year. Internally, we track our business on NEP basis, growth remains pretty steady on that front with upwards of 39% for FY 2026. More importantly, we are focused on profitable geographies and profitable cohorts of consumers, right? Which is why if you look at our mix of business on the new to industry is now about 94%, 95%, portability has come down further. As maintained in the previous calls also, we will continue to chase businesses which are profitable in nature, right? Growth, we are not desperate to grow our market share at the cost of profits.
Sure, sure. Last question is if you can share the quantum of deferred revenue on long-term policy as of March 26.
Quantum of deferred revenue is the premium received in advance.
Yes, premium received in advance. Yes.
We can give it to you offline. Yeah, it's part of the balance sheet, we'll share it.
Sure. Thank you. Thank you. That's it from my side. Thank you.
Thank you, Nidhesh.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Supratim Datta from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks a lot for the opportunity for this follow-up. You know, just two questions. One, you know, you have transitioned to this MediAssist platform. You know, it has been now nearly one year. Just wanted to understand, you know, how is that transition playing out? What are the savings that you're getting? How should we think about that playing out over the next, you know, couple years? That's 1. Secondly, you know, on this IRDAI initiative regarding Public Insurance Registry, wanted to understand, you know, how do you see that impact loss ratios, particularly on the fraud and wasted side? If you could give some color there, that would be helpful. Thank you.
On the platform shift on the claims processing, that is now nearly complete. We are just entering the final phase of our last set of products that will be shifted onto that platform. By this quarter end, I think we should be fully through. We're clearly seeing efficiencies coming across for which we had sought for the, you know, platform and that's playing out. More, more importantly, it's not simply a matter of efficiency, but also the effectiveness of managing our claims better and giving our customers a better experience. On both those fronts, we are doing fine.
On the PIR side, Supratim, this is a very good initiative, we believe so. It will help the industry to have more disciplined underwriting data. We await further, you know, insights on this. We are closely engaged with the regulator in terms of building this model. Our CTO is part of the working group as far as this particular model is concerned. We'll keep you updated as we get to know more.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Mohit Surana from HDFC AMC. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Congratulations. From my side, I just wanted to know, since historically, we've had ups and downs in terms of loss ratios, and often, external environment has also played a part in it. How do you assess the current external environment in terms of the healthcare lifestyle changes as well as some of the seasonal stuff? Second, if, you know, we can in some way, is there a thought process to smoothen out some of these movements over time? Often, you know, the profit and loss and loss ratios kind of get impacted by changes in external environment.
While we are trying to improve the internal processes and policies, external environment has historically often played a part in, you know, the how vagaries of business have panned out. Is there a thought process to smoothen out the impact of external impacts?
Yeah. Mohit, that's a good question. I think you'll be happy to know that there is a lot of engagement now happening at various stakeholder levels on the external environment side to manage the piece that you're talking about, whether it is the council, GI Council, creating a common empanelment of hospitals, whether it is the IRDAI and CII working together to bring the payers and providers together on a single platform. Five working groups have been created, and we believe that all these initiatives will over time, you know, reduce the friction and also at the same time reduce the challenges that we used to face earlier. I think this is something that we can do.
On the internal side, as you have seen that over the last four, five quarters, we have set a process in place. For the last three quarters consistently, we have been demonstrating that the loss ratios have been improving. I think the model is, you know, working fine, and we will continue to invest in the same model. Beyond that, I think, company will focus on sustainable growth with a sustainable ROE target that we have set for ourselves. If that answers your question. Thank you.
Got it. Thank you, and wish you all the best.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Nilesh Kambli for the closing remarks.
Thank you everyone for joining the call. You know, it has been one of the turnaround year for Star Health with in terms of higher retail growth and improvement in the combined ratio, driven by an improvement in loss ratio. You know, the normalized PAT with 8% investment yield has seen a robust growth to INR 222 crores. You know, we continue to build on that in the coming future. We're continuing to execute our strategy with more conviction and confidence, you know, thanks for your continued support. Thank you very much.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Star Health and Allied Insurance Company, that concludes this conference call. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.