SBI General Insurance, the non-life subsidiary of State Bank of India, is confident of breaking even this fiscal and generating underwriting profit in the medium term.

The optimism stems from the fact that the general insurer registered profits during the first two quarters of this fiscal. This was its first-ever profitable half-year period.

During the first-half of this fiscal, the company had a gross written premium (GWP) of about ₹1,200 crore and generated a profit of about ₹6 crore. During the second-half, it is aiming to achieve GWP of ₹1,300-1,400 crore.

“From our perspective, we are looking to grow profitability on a sustainable basis. While we hope we can achieve breakeven this year, we don’t expect the underwriting profit to happen in the short term, but in the medium term we will certainly achieve that. Some of our competitors have done like that. So, it’s quite possible,” Andrew Farlow, Deputy CEO, SBI General Insurance told BusinessLine on the sidelines of a meeting here.

He said two key factors helped the company achieve quarterly profit for the first time since inception. “Our focus on management of expenses and analysing our book on understanding the mix of business and devising different growth strategies have been the key drivers to book profit in Q1 of this fiscal. Also, we have been working to make our claims process more efficient and customer-focused,” he added.

Farlow said the company had created strong bases through revamped business portfolios in the first half. Going forward, in the second half it would consolidate and build on this to achieve growth. “Also, a benign catastrophe situation will be very helpful,” he said, adding that the company took a hit of about ₹47 crore on account of Chennai floods last year.

With about 35 per cent of its book, motor is its largest business segment. It seeks to achieve faster growth in the health segment, which accounts for about 11 per cent now.

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