The Hindu Business Line : 80% of ICICI Prudential ULIP investors switch to equity

According to Chief Investment Officer of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, Mr Puneet Nanda, the sell-off seen in the market is more due to technical than fundamental factors.

Excerpts from CNBC-TV18's exclusive interview:

Have you been getting requests for that equity linkage with insurance product? Do you think that the picture will change now after the stock market correction?

ULIP forms a bulk of our portfolio. Of our total AUM of about $2 billion, ULIP constitutes almost 3/4th of it. Of which, equity is about a billion dollar. In this period of market volatility, say from May 10-12 up to the end of May, we have seen fair amount of switches. Interestingly, most of the people are switching into equity. Of the total amount, almost 80 per cent has actually switched into the equity funds.

Over and above that the entire new premium that we collected during this month, actually 85 per cent of it went towards the equity.

In terms of switches in new premium, how much would that total to in cash?

For May, we alone would have invested about Rs 350-400 crore into equity. It will be a combination of switches and new premium.

Do you think this is an industry wide phenomenon? Do you have any ballpark numbers of what the flows into ULIPs could have been, because we want to gauge how much money is coming into equities from insurance channels?

Unfortunately, currently in the insurance sector, there is no mechanism for discloser of either AUM or money flowing into equities. Our AUM is about $2 billion, which is about Rs 8,800 crore. We have been leaders in the private sector market.

With our AUM being around Rs 8,800 crore, the total AUM for the private sector insurance may be somewhere in the region of $5-6 billion. Of which, I would assume, at least 50 per cent or so should be in the equity markets.

More Stories on : Interview | Mutual Funds

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Prudential ICICI Mutual tops in asset chart

Kotak Mahindra MF, UCO Bank pact

Bull domination

Steel stocks: Advance selectively

Centurion BoP: Turns active

Sensex makes a strong comeback

Ray of hope

Markets gain on buying by foreign funds

Close-ended schemes are the in-thing for AMCs

80% of ICICI Prudential ULIP investors switch to equity

Indian Bank likely to float IPO in 2007