ICICI Pru Life Insurance: Focus on growth critical to curb underperformance

While the product mix has improved, sharp de-growth in premium is a worry

The ICICI Prudential Life Insurance or I-Pru Life stock has always enjoyed preference among investors, though mainly for its cheapest valuation among the listed life insurance stocks. At 2.5x FY21 estimated price-to-embedded value, the I-Pru Life stock trades at a 25 - 40 per cent discount to peers. However, seen against SBI Life and HDFC Life’s gains of 10-17 per cent in the last three months, the I-Pru Life stock has lagged them with 8 per cent gains -- the reason being a greater contraction in monthly premia collected.

While April-June could be regarded as the period when the business was