LIC’s embedded value estimated at Rs 5,414.9 billion

CHENNAI: Asian life insurance giant, the Life Insurance Corporation of India on Thursday said its Indian Embedded Value (IEV) as on March 31, 2022 was Rs 541,942 crore.

The embedded value in the case of a life insurance company is the current value of the company's future profits.

According to LIC officials, the IEV has been determined at Rs 541,492 crore (Rs 5,414.9 billion) as compared to Rs 95,605 crore (Rs 956 billion) as on March 31, 2021 and Rs 539,686 crore (Rs 5,397 billion) as on September 30, 2021.

Officials said the volatility in the stock market has impacted the LIC's investment market value to the tune of Rs 40,000 crore which, in turn, had its impact on IEV.

According to the officials, the Rs 40,000 crore reduction in the market value of its investment was in both equity and debt segments of the market.

The IEV as of September 30, 2021 was significantly higher than the IEV of March 2021 due to the bifurcation of fund that was carried out by LIC pursuant to changes in the LIC Act during the FY 2021-22.

The LIC Board on January 8, 2022 had approved bifurcation of the single fund into separate Participating and Non-Participating funds and the effect of such bifurcation has been reflected in the Financials as at March 31, 2022.

The life insurer had engaged Milliman Advisors LLP for arriving at the embedded value.

On Thursday the LIC's Board accepted Milliman's IEV report.

LIC Chairman M.R. Kumar said the valuation of IEV took some time to get completed.

On the LIC's decision to publish the embedded value once in six months - in March and September - Kumar said it is in line with the industry practice.

Further, determining the embedded value of a life insurance company of LIC size with about 28 crore policies is a time consuming and elaborate process, officials added.

The Value of New Business (VNB) for year ended March 31, 2022 has been determined to be Rs 7,619 crore (Rs 76.19 billion) as compared to Rs 4,167 crore (Rs 41.67 billion) for the year ended March 31, 2021.

Also, the VNB for the six-month period ended September 30, 2021 was Rs 1,583 crore (Rs 15.83 billion).

The VNB margin, for the year ended March 31, 2022 is 15.1 per cent as compared to 9.9 per cent for the year ended March 31, 2021.

Officials said the VNB margin went up owing to change in business mix like the group business going up to 29 per cent from 24 per cent.

The ROEV (Return on embedded value) for March 21, 2022 is 11.9 per cent as compared to 36.9 per cent for March 2021.