Kolkata, Apr 20 (PTI) National Insurance Company, a non-life insurer in the public sector, which has been reporting losses for the last few years, has set its sights on break-even and returning to profits from the 2023-24 fiscal, an official said on Thursday.

The city-based insurance major is taking several measures to reduce cost, improve margins and focus on high-margin retail products to achieve its goals and return to profits, he said.

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"We hope to break even or make a nominal profit in 2023-24. Our profit is expected to grow consistently henceforth as we have taken several measures to eliminate underwriting losses," NIC General Manager T Babu Paul said on the sidelines of an insurance event organised by CII here.

NIC is working on reducing its current combined ratio from 120 per cent to 100 per cent in the next three years, he said.

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The combined ratio measures the amount of money flowing out of an insurance company in the form of dividends, expenses, and losses. such a ratio below 100 per cent indicates that the company is making an underwriting profit.

To bring down the combined ratio, NIC is "tweaking" its commission policy and "focusing on high-margin retail products", Paul said.

"We are working on a strategy to bring down the combined ratio to 100 per cent in three years. We will finalise the new commission policy in the next three months.

"This will help improve the bottomline. Our retail growth last year was in single digits, and we are looking at growing our retail book by double digits," Paul said.

The company has not finalised its accounts for the 2022-23 fiscal yet, but it is expected to make a hefty loss despite a treasury profit.

In FY'22, the loss was Rs 1,678 crore, and the combined ratio was 134.

The loss was Rs 565 crore in FY'21, Rs 4,111 crore in FY'20, and Rs 1,696 crore in FY'19.

The support of expected treasury income of Rs 2,700-2,800 crore will play a major role for the insurance major to back in the profit in FY'24, the official added.

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