ICICI Prudential Life Insurance reported a 16% dip in net profit to Rs 341 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2018. Even for the financial year 2017-18, the life insurer saw its net profit decline 4% to Rs 1,620 crore, primarily on account of higher new business strain resulting from new business growth. Sandeep Batra, executive director, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, said: “We have been focusing on selling customer centric products and our saving business in terms of annualised premium equivalent (APE) grew by 15.4% and protection business by 71.5% during the last fiscal. Robust growth in value of new business (VNB) is attributable to the growth in both savings and protection APE as well as improvements in persistency and cost efficiency.”
