Cashing in on low valuation of stocks amid high volatility, insurance behemoth Life Insurance Corporation (LIC), which is among the largest domestic institutional in-vestor, invested Rs 34,000 crore in equities in the first quarter of the financial year.
The PSU insurance giant bought equities worth Rs 46,444 crore but booked a profit of Rs 12,444 crore.
LIC chairman M R Kumar said, “We are contrarian in our investment philosophy, so we thought this is a good time to buy stocks.”
In post Q1 earnings conference, Kumar said that in view of the market volatility, the company saw opportunities to invest in more equities instead of booking profits. Due to this, LIC’s investment gains fell year-on-year, with the company booking equity profit of Rs 5,076 crore in June quarter much lower than Rs 11,368 crore logged in the corresponding, he added.
The public sector insurance behemoth on Friday posted a multi-fold rise in its net profit at Rs 682.9 crore in the April-June quarter of FY23, the company informed in an exchange filing.
Year-on-year, LIC’s overall business saw a strong momentum with marketing activity gathering pace. The insurer’s total premium income rose 20.35 percent to Rs 98,352 crore in the first quarter of FY23 compared to Rs 81,721.41 crore during the corresponding quarter of last fiscal.
During the quarter, LIC sold 36.81 lakh policies in the individual segment registering a rise of 59.56 percent compared to 23.07 lakh policies sold in the June quarter of FY22.
LIC’s assets under management increased to Rs 41.02 lakh crore as of June 30th as compared to Rs 38.13 lakh crore in Q1 of FY22, registering an increase of 7.57 percent.
“While the growth numbers are very robust for the first quarter as seen in comparison to the same quarter of FY2021-22, we are aware that the Q1 of the previous year, FY 2021-22, was impacted by a very tough second wave of Covid. How-ever, the trajectory seems upwards for sure, and we are looking at increased business volumes as is evident in our market share in the year to date since January 2022,” the LIC chairperson said.
