Message from Managing Director and CEO

Dear Shareholders,

Bajaj Allianz Life’s journey in FY2022 can be best described with the Latin adage “Audentis Fortuna Juvat” or “Fortune Favours the Bold”. Our year was challenging and thrilling as we crossed several significant milestones. Each of them were a reflection and result of the key strategic decisions and interventions made through our transformational years, as well as those taken up during the year. I’m proud of the team that took the bold decisions to fruition. At the same time humbled by the continuous direction and encouragement received from shareholders and promoters. We move ahead with a future-ready and robust business model that will enable the company to maintain its growth momentum in the years ahead.

There were some key initiatives that enabled us to become the fastest growing life insurer amongst the top ten private players on Individual Rated New Business (IRNB) basis for FY2022. These initiatives further strengthened the tenets of our promise on long-term sustainable growth to all our stakeholders.

Customer Obsession at Bajaj Allianz Life

Our Customer Obsession vision can be succulently described using the example of Power of Compounding. Every decision we made and will make ahead, will be the ‘interest added to interest’ for the customer to enjoy. Thereby, both new and existing customers will take home the compounded investments we are making towards delivering excellence in every engagement they have with Bajaj Allianz Life. We are working towards this vision by recalibrating our parameters of excellence: products, process stakeholder engagement and our digital and technology eco-system.

Products: Considering the impact of the pandemic on markets and the interest rates, it was imperative that we give our customers many more reasons to stay invested in their life goals. We did so by introducing innovative and top-of-the-line products: Bajaj Allianz Life Guaranteed Pension Goal and Bajaj Allianz Life Assured Wealth Goal. Keeping our signature strategy in place, both these products come with very unique and first-of-their-kind features. The former makes retirement planning affordable and has a regular pay option (first in the Indian life insurance industry), while the latter is a best-in-class guaranteed income plan offering long-term income with an option to step-up the income.

Process: Robust systems and processes will not only make us future ready, and new-age but also play a critical role in becoming a leading life insurer. In FY2022 we launched many key initiatives, each leveraging either our power of technology or sharp data usage. These include Pre-Approved Sum Assured (PASA) or a process to Cross-sell/Upsell successfully, our initiatives on First Time Right (FTR) and many other processes that are critical for customers, partners as well as our shareholders.

Stakeholder Engagement: The year was packed with key interventions designed to ensure that our Partners, Insurance Consultants and our Customers enjoy higher degree of ease while engaging with us. Furthermore, the dynamic business environment (during the Covid-19 second wave and after) required us to roll out impactful communications for our stakeholders. By continuously leveraging the three V's – Video, Vernacular and Voice – we ensured the teams remained connected and motivated, and customers were more than aware of their life goals journey with us. The financial year saw us invest towards customer engagement and increasing the awareness of all the advantages we are offering them via our products and services.

Digital and Technology Ecosystem: Over the years we made significant investments towards enhancing our digital and technology eco-systems. We worked to customise various platform with the right kind of data, technology and digital assets for our stakeholders. Whether it was a small, yet very significant, start to our new core system or the introduction of many more services on our Whatsapp Bot for Customers, Partners and Insurance Consultants, or even simplifying some buying journeys, each enhancement was designed keeping the future in mind.

Building a Team and Culture that Focuses on Excellence

The second wave of Covid-19 brought in a series of challenges in several house-holds and teams, making it essential to further re-align our peoples approach with relevant policies. These people-centric policies and programs came together to not only support our teams, as and when they needed us, but also to remain connected, motivated and driven as we manoeuvred through challenging times, together.

Through these policies we created a security net for our people, especially during the critical Covid-19 period. In addition to winning the goodwill of the team, we now have a force that is agile, responsive and believes in high-performance. A more collaborative and future-ready team, as well a culture to co-create.

Our people approach received several accolades for the change it brought about. We were recognised amongst the Best Employers of 2021 by Kincentric, a Spencer Stuart company. This was after Kincentric’s robust assessment that measures and identifies organizations who have transformed their people practices to drive better business results. Bajaj Allianz Life was also adjudged amongst “Great Places to Work” in FY2022, for all our dynamic policies that attracted and retained the best talent.

Laying Down a Strong Foundation for a Sustainable Growth Ahead

Despite being a tough year, FY2021 business numbers validated that we were on the right track to strengthen the trust our stakeholders have in us. We invested in product development, distribution network, training and re-skilling our people, digital, technology and data infrastructure, amongst many other business requirements. In FY2022, we took on this journey with added vigour to ensure that the long-term growth vision of the organisation remains strong.

I’m happy to report that not only did the team deliver on both business and quality parameters. As we closed FY2022:

• Our Gross Written Premium (GWP) stood at INR 16,000+ crores , the highest ever the company had
• With a strong 72% growth in New Business Value, again the highest ever after overruns
• Renewals saw a strong 22% growth, clearly indicating our customers are keen to continue their Life Goals journey with us
• Our Persistency saw improvements across all cohorts, again highlighting the trust quotient we enjoy amongst customers
• Our overall Claims Settlement stood at 99.74% and Retail Claims Settlement Ratio stood at 99.02%, indicating that we are always going to prioritize our promise to our customers
• Highest ever AUM of INR 85K crore, indicating the faith stakeholders have in us to manage their Life Goals journey
• We saw a substantial decrease in our Grievance Ratio, yet again validating that the steps we are taking to strengthen our relationship with our customers is working well

As FY2022 concluded, our list of achievements gave us reasons to be truly proud. Bajaj Allianz Life emerged as the fastest growing company on IRNB basis amongst the top 10 private players with a growth of 49%. This was more than double of the entire private segment’s growth at 22%. The industry clocked a 16% growth. Our Number of Policies had a similar trend and closed the year with 11% growth, as against the 4% for the industry and 3% for the private players.

Furthermore, our Agency channel registered fastest growth in the industry, Institutional Business outperformed its peers in the industry and BALIC Direct channel becomes the fastest growing in the industry within three years of its launch.

To me, these are continuous reminders that our teams are working hard and working right to ensure our sustained growth priorities are met, while meeting all customer needs.

ESG

The long-term promise, we as life insurers make, isn’t limited to our customers and shareholders. Consciously, we are taking steps to hold our promise to emerge as a strong corporate citizen as well. The Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) journey also saw rapid movement in the FY2022. Together with the Group, Bajaj Allianz Life put together initiatives that enabled us to deliver on key aspects of being an aware and active citizen. From employee-focused plans to Go Green initiatives in our print-heavy industry, Bajaj Allianz Life consciously took decisions and launched programs to build on our ESG scores.

Towards Many More Decades of Enabling Life Goals

As Bajaj Allianz Life moves ahead into the 22nd year of business, we will continue to focus on garnering sustainable growth while keeping a keen eye on our quality parameters. The sharper focus on our customer needs will play a very critical role in this. Not only will it bring together all the aspects of our transformational journey, but will also identify newer avenues of excellence for the Company.

I believe, we are at the beginning of yet another transformational year at Bajaj Allianz Life, and I speak on behalf of every team member when I say that we are prepared to take on bold decisions and deliver on them.