SBI Life Insurance, India’s largest private life insurer by individual new business premium, reported a doubling of its protection new business premium to ₹1,958 crore for the period ended June 30, 2026 – a 100% increase year on year that outpaced the company’s overall new business premium growth, which reached ₹8,908 crore from ₹7,268 crore in the same period, according to the company’s press release published July 28, 2026. Profit after tax rose 22% to ₹725 crore, while regular premium grew 40% year on year.
The protection surge is traceable in part to a specific policy change. On September 22, 2025, the Indian government eliminated the 18% goods and services tax previously levied on individual life and health insurance premiums, under Notification No. 16/2025 Central Tax (Rate), as confirmed by India’s Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Finance. The reform reduced the out-of-pocket cost of term coverage for individual policyholders.
SBI Life’s result is consistent with a sector-wide trend among India’s major private life insurers. According to The Business Standard, ICICI Prudential’s managing director and CEO, Anup Bagchi, said in Q1 FY2027 (April-June 2026), the same period: “Protection continues to be our core focus area, and we registered a strong growth of 60.4 per cent Y-o-Y in our retail protection business in Q1FY27, driven by the goods and services tax (GST) exemption on protection products and various company-led initiatives. This marks the third consecutive quarter of retail protection growth exceeding 40 per cent following the GST reforms.”
SBI Life’s managing director and CEO, Amit Jhingran, described the result in terms of a structural demand shift. “SBI Life continued its growth trajectory from FY2026 into the first quarter of FY2027, delivering a 14 per cent increase in Individual Rated Premium, supported by a favourable shift in product mix. All product segments recorded growth on an Individual Rated Premium basis, and all key distribution channels achieved double-digit expansion. The increasing contribution from protection solutions and guaranteed non-par savings products reflects evolving customer preferences and our strategic focus,” Jhingran said, as reported by The Business Standard.
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The shift in product mix is visible across the portfolio. The share of ULIPs in total APE dropped to 46% from 57% year on year, while the share of non-participating products increased to 49% from 38%. Protection individual new business premium grew 22% to ₹202 crore. APE for the period ended June 30, 2026, reached ₹5,379 crore, up 36% year on year. VoNB stood at ₹1,408 crore, up 29%, with a VoNB margin of 26.2% – down from 27.4% in the year-earlier period. For context, HDFC Life reported a VoNB margin of 25.0% and ICICI Prudential 26.7% in Q1 FY2027.
The margin compression from 27.4% to 26.2% is a commercial dynamic worth noting for insurers and reinsurers tracking this market. Protection and non-par guaranteed products carry higher initial acquisition and claims expenses relative to ULIPs, which are investment-linked and transfer market risk to the policyholder. A mix shift toward protection therefore tends to compress near-term VoNB margins even as it builds long-term embedded value by adding higher face-value policies to the in-force book. The 211% rise in total new business sum assured to ₹8,50,025 crore – growing at a multiple of premium – is a direct consequence of this dynamic and signals a material increase in the mortality risk being placed onto the insurer’s balance sheet and, in turn, into the reinsurance market. Indian embedded value stood at ₹85,293 crore, up 15%. The solvency ratio was 1.96 as of June 30, 2026, above the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) regulatory floor of 1.50. Assets under management grew 10% to ₹5,24,850 crore, with 94% of debt holdings in AAA-rated or sovereign instruments.
The 13th-month and 49th-month persistency ratios improved by 61 basis points and 68 basis points respectively. The quarterly financial results separately showed the 13th-month ratio at 87.7% against 87.1% a year earlier, while the 61st-month ratio declined to 58.4% from 63.6% – a drop in long-term policyholder retention that is relevant to embedded value assumptions and reinsurer assessments of long-term portfolio quality. SBI Life held a 24.9% private market share in individual new business premium and 22.2% in individual rated premium as of June 30, 2026.
The bancassurance channel’s share of APE declined from 58% to 47% in Q1 FY2027, while other channels rose from 15% to 28%. The same directional shift appeared at HDFC Life, where bancassurance’s share of individual APE fell from 60% to 57%, and at ICICI Prudential, where it dropped from 30% to 27%. The concurrent movement across all three major private players points to a sector-wide rebalancing rather than a firm-specific development. The company operates through 3,71,935 trained insurance professionals and 1,241 offices across India.
The results arrive against a backdrop of persistent underinsurance. Overall insurance penetration in India remained flat at 3.7% in FY2024-25, while life insurance penetration declined to 2.7% from 2.8% the prior year, according to the IRDAI Annual Report 2024-25. The global average stood at 7.3%, with life insurance accounting for 3% and non-life 4.3%, according to the Swiss Re Sigma World Insurance Report cited in the same IRDAI publication. Whether the current protection growth represents a durable structural shift toward closing that gap, or a demand response concentrated in the periods immediately following the GST reform, remains an open question. CareEdge Ratings maintained a medium-term industry growth forecast of 8% to 11% in its June 2026 BFSI report, while noting that geopolitical uncertainty “could have led to some postponement of insurance purchases.”
