All three companies- Finance, Life and General Insurance growing well– Bajaj Finserv

All three companies- Finance, Life and General Insurance growing well– Bajaj Finserv

Update on the Indian Equity Market:

On Friday, Nifty closed with 2.3% gains at 11,050. Within NIFTY50, BAJAJFINSV (+6.6%), HCLTECH (+5.3%), and CIPLA (+5.1%) were the top gainers, while SBILIFE (-1.1%), BPCL (-0.9%), and UPL (-0.6%) were the only losing stocks. All the sectoral indices ended positive withIT (+3.5%), MEDIA (+3.4%), and AUTO (+3.4%) gaining the most.

All three companies- Finance, Life and General Insurance growing well– Bajaj Finserv

Excerpts of an interview with Mr. Sanjiv Bajaj, Chairman and MD, Bajaj Finserv (BAJAJFINSV), published on ETBFSI website dated 23rdSeptember 2020:
• Seven or eight years ago, the life insurance company (BALIC) and general insurance company (BAGIC) contributed to around 75-80% of Bajaj Finserv’s consolidated profits. BALIC contributed the largest, followed byBAGIC, and the least contribution came from Bajaj Finance.
• This has changed significantly since then. Today, Bajaj Finance is the largest contributor to consolidated profitability, followed by BAGIC and BALIC respectively.
• Bajaj Finserv owns 74% of the two insurance companies and a little under 52% of the finance company. So the proportion of the profit pick up ends up being different.
• All three engines are growing well so the shareholders get a diversified mix of profits from these companies.
• Companies under the Bajaj Finserv umbrella have become even more digital than before. Management has plans for the businesses to come out stronger, better and to provide a set of solutions for customers keeping in mind lessons learnt in this crisis is what the customers need.
1. Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance (BALIC)
• Life insurance is a peculiar business in the sense that when it is growing fast, the business burns more cash upfront in the form of commissions and expenses. But the company earns premium over a period of time and makes profits in later years. On the other hand, through slow growth years, the opposite happens and the profit goes up.
• Post the difficult lockdown phase, BALIC’s premium collections have come back to 80-85% of pre-COVID levels.
• The two insurance businesses are distributed very well through the country. As a result the recovery is quite good because recovery outside of the top 10, 20 cities has been very strong.
2. Bajaj Allianz General Insurance (BAGIC)
• Bajaj’s market share within general insurance companies is between 6.5% and 7%. Bajaj runs a diversified set of business lines, and most of these lines have market shares which are more or less around the 6.5%-7%`range.
• The market share also varies year on year based on changing competition and market opportunities.
• Bajaj may not be the cheapest policy issuer but is quick, fair, and transparent not only in policy issuances but also in claim handling.
• In the case of crop insurance, it is about 6.5-7% of Bajaj’s mix of the overall industry’s share. There are two main seasons -kharif and rabi –and the share of this business line in Bajaj’s business depends on what the dynamic is in that season. But it normally evens out over a year.
• In terms of uptick in motor insurance, the picture is still not very clear. There is growth due to pent-up demand and further growth is expected due to the upcoming festive season. But what will happen post that towards end of FY21E is unclear.
• The demand is still interwoven with the impact of the pandemic on local lives. Bajaj saw good growth in June. But July and part of August were terrible because of local lockdowns.
3. Bajaj Finance
• Due to the local lockdowns in the last few months, the business in top 20 cities got severely impacted.
• Bajaj Finance got impacted more compared to BAGIC and BALIC as it has a large percentage of business coming from the top 20 cities. But things have been getting better from August.
• Over two-thirds of the borrowers, who took the moratorium, had never bounced with Bajaj Finance earlier. That means they were conserving liquidity.
• Almost 30% of the book took a moratorium in the first couple of months. It came down to the low teens in the last two months. As people got more confident and as the cities and businesses started opening up, they started paying as well and that is a very good sign.
• Even though things are moving in the right direction, the situation is still unpredictable. Bajaj Finance continues to be extra conservative, has stocked up on liquidity and continues to make additional provisions.
• Bajaj Finance also remains conservative in incremental lending and will go back to growth when things start to improve.

Consensus Estimate (Source: market screener and investing.com websites)
• The closing price of BAJAJFINSV was ₹ 5,784/- as of 25-September-2020. It traded at 2.6x/ 2.3x/ 2.0x the consensus BVPS estimate of ₹ 2,188/2,478/ 2,873 for FY21E/ FY22E/ FY23E respectively.
• The consensus target price of ₹ 7,248/- implies a PB multiple of 2.5x on FY23E BVPS of ₹ 2,873/-.

Disclaimer: “The views expressed are for information purposes only. The information provided herein should not be considered as investment advice or research recommendation. The users should rely on their own research and analysis and should consult their own investment advisors to determine the merit, risks, and suitability of the information provided.”

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