Are Insurance Stocks A Good Buy?

If the pandemic brings some relief to India’s under-penetrated insurance sector, could stocks stay behind? Presently, out of the 57 insurance companies - with 24 in life and 33 in non-life business - six companies are listed on the Indian bourses. In fact, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance became first Insurance company to go public in the year 2016. The year 2017 witnessed a spate of Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) in life and non-life insurance including SBI Life Insurance, The New India Assurance, General Insurance Corporation (GIC RE), HDFC Life Insurance and ICICI Lombard General Insurance. Stocks of all these companies were oversubscribed post their IPO launch. These stocks saw a smart pull back from the recent lows of March 2020. A sharp rebound in stock prices was also observed. On an average, the stock prices of these six companies rose over 60 per cent since...