Max Financial Services reported a 17% rise in individual adjusted first-year premiums in Q1 FY27, boosted by digital initiatives and strategic capital infusions, as the insurer leans into protection and health segments amid evolving market dynamics.
Max Financial Services said its first quarter of FY27 opened with faster growth in individual adjusted first-year premium, which rose 17% year on year and outpaced both private-sector and industry growth. The insurer’s parent said the period also marked a capital and ownership milestone, with Axis Bank increasing its stake in Axis Max Life Insurance by 0.98 percentage points through an equity infusion of INR381 crore, lifting its holding to 19.99%.
The company said profitability improved as the value of new business margin widened to 23.2% from 20.3% a year earlier, helping lift value of new business by 33%. Management linked the improvement to a better product mix, especially stronger protection sales, and to favourable yield-curve movements. In the company’s commentary, most of the impact from goods and services tax had already been absorbed in the previous quarter.
Protection and health continued to be the main growth engine, rising 44% in the quarter, with term insurance up 57%. Annuities also stood out, surging 116% on the back of product launches and a low base. Sumit Madan, managing director and chief executive, said online distribution was becoming less dependent on a single large web aggregator, with 45% of online sales now coming from elsewhere, up from 38% a year earlier.
The company also highlighted progress in digital operations. It said more than 30 artificial intelligence and machine learning models are now in production, AI-driven cross-sell efforts generated INR58 crore of new business and its customer app has surpassed 10 lakh installs and 4 lakh monthly active users. Max Financial said these initiatives are helping deepen engagement across direct and partner-led channels.
Even so, the quarter was not without pressure points. The company said its 13-month persistency weakened because one product variant underperformed after launch and was later discontinued, while the offline proprietary channel grew only 9% because of one-off policy cancellations. Management said longer-tenure persistency trends were improving and argued that the lower sales growth in that channel should normalise.
On capital, finance chief Amrit Singh said the solvency ratio stood at 198%, comfortably above both the regulatory minimum and the company’s internal threshold. He said the latest equity infusion gave the business headroom for at least two to three quarters, while the group continued to assess whether future capital raising would be needed depending on the timing of the risk-based capital framework and accounting standard 117. According to the company, structure simplification work is also advancing after recent regulatory changes, although no timetable has been set for the next step.
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