ICICI group was a pioneer in many ways, the opinion we have of the group starting from 2009 (no prizes for guessing what changed) kind of colors the perception we have of the group. ICICI bank taught the banking world how to structure construction finance deals as an example, they were also the first to offer a 3 in 1 product for someone who wants to invest into the markets. ICICI Securities is way ahead of HDFC Securities, so General Insurance is not the only area where ICICI group is ahead of HDFC group. As an IT salesman, there was an unwritten rule that any new product would first need to be accepted by the ICICI Bank technology team before the industry accepted that.
Coming to the management team -
- Bhargav Dasgupta – Has been MD & CEO of company since 2009, has been a career ICICI group employee since early 90’s and has worked with ICICI Bank in various roles across project finance, international banking, technology and strategy
- Gopal Balachandran – CFO, has been with company since 2002. Has worked with ICICI group in roles across financial reporting, taxation, risk management
- Alok Agarwal – ED & CMO, has been with company since 2011 and with ICICI group since early 90’s
- Sanjeev Mantri – ED & CMO, has been with ICICI group since 2003 and with company since 2015. Has been a career banker with exposure across multiple businesses
This is unlike other subsidiaries of ICICI Bank where there is a transfer of people from ICICI Bank to run separate businesses. For e.g. Anup Bagchi was CEO at ISec before he became ED at ICICI Bank, Shilpa Kumar was in Corporate Markets team at bank before being posted as CEO at ISec, Vijay Chandok was heading International Banking at bank before he was made CEO of Isec. The general insurance management has spent a long time at the helm and actually understand the business and industry quite well.
Lombard Canada Ltd is an interesting story by itself. This was the property and casualty insurance subsidiary of Fairfax holdings, was later rebranded Northbridge Insurance, taken public by Fairfax in 2003 and then taken private in 2009. From Fairfax 2009 annual report
From their 2019 annual report
Looks consistent over the years, of course their portfolio is a subset of what ICICI Lombard does today.