PB Fintech, which runs insurance marketplace Policybazaar, held its Q1 FY27 earnings call on August 5. Here’s a closer look at some of the developments the management disclosed on the call and in the investor presentation.
1. Paisabazaar is expanding beyond lending and building a payments platform.
PB Fintech’s credit arm, Paisabazaar, is diversifying beyond its core lending business. The platform is expanding into Mutual Funds and plans to launch a daily SIP platform in August.
“We are launching a daily SIP platform. This industry is growing at 20-22% year-on-year. While salaried customers have several options to buy Mutual Funds. Penetration remains very low in the self-employed category for any savings products. There is a lot of scope there,” Santosh Agarwal, CEO of Paisabazaar, said during the post-earnings call.
Over the next 1-2 years, the company will prioritise customer stickiness over revenue for its savings product.
“I don’t think savings would account for more than 10% of Paisabazaar’s revenue in the next two years or so. A lot of things that we’re doing is to build engagement on our app and savings, mutual funds, bonds. A lot of work on the payment side, basically building payments,” Agarwal told analysts on the call.
Paisabazaar is also scaling its fixed income offerings. The platform will now allow users to invest in corporate bonds, government securities and fixed deposits (FDs). In its investor presentation, PB Fintech disclosed that Paisabazaar has received approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to operate as an Online Bond Platform Provider.
These announcements are in line with Paisabazaar’s broader diversification push. Earlier this year, the platform also received a stock broking licence from SEBI to operate as a stockbroker. It already has a payment aggregator licence.
2. PB Health is eyeing Rs 500 crore in ARR by March 2027.
PB Healthcare, the healthcare business incubated by Policybazaar, reported a loss of about Rs 7 crore in the April-June quarter. However, the management is confident that the business will break even by the end of FY27.
“By March next year, PB Health will have an annual run rate (ARR) of about Rs 500 crore. We will break even,” said Yashish Dahiya, Chairman and Group CEO of PB Fintech.
Last year, PB Fintech acquired digital health platform Fitterfly to strengthen its preventive-care and chronic-disease management offerings. As per the management, Fitterfly’s revenue has grown fourfold since the acquisition.
Dahiya further said the PB Health has also received approval to start billing at its second hospital. It currently runs two hospitals in the Delhi-NCR region, with several others in the pipeline.
Overall, PB Fintech aims to build an ecosystem of 500-600 hospitals. While the company plans to acquire a few of them and operate under the PB Health brand, others will support PB Care Plus health insurance plans, offering coverage of Rs 5 lakh per year, and other value-added benefits such as free health checkup once every year and up to 10% discount on premium renewals.
3. Commissions based on effort are not feasible.
India’s insurance regulator IRDAI is reportedly considering an effort-based commission model to replace the uniform payout structure for selling insurance policies.
Responding to an analyst’s query on this, PB Fintech’s Group CEO said effort-based insurance agent commissions are not feasible. He also pointed to a legal contradiction.
“Legally, as defined by the regulator, the largest amount of effort in any sale needs to be put by a broker more than any other channel. That is as legally defined in terms of tasks to be undertaken by the regulator in terms of customer support, in terms of sales, in terms of claims support, in terms of everything. It’s a very difficult position to take that the entity that is supposed to do the maximum effort is somehow meant to get less commission,” he said.
According to Dahiya, anybody who wants to sell insurance needs to do the 4-5 things:
- generate inquiries
- convert those inquiries into sale
- providing a platform (app/website/paperwork) to transact
- handling post-payment issuance (medical tests, document collection), and
- being there when customers file claims.
“The platform part, while it seems like a big thing, is actually the easy part. There are about 300 platforms in this country on which you can go and buy insurance from 20+ insurers. I don’t think the platform is the problem. The problem is generating an inquiry costs a lot of money. Converting an inquiry costs a lot of money. Then, to bring goodwill by supporting customers and getting issuance and getting claims settled costs a lot of money,” Dahiya said.
PB Fintech makes only about 1–2% profit on the premiums it handles. Once interest income is removed, that profit drops to under 1%.
“If anybody can do it for less, most welcome” Dahiya said, hinting that if the regulator or rivals think these costs can be squeezed further, they’re welcome to try, but he believes it’s not feasible.
It is to be noted that Poliybazaar previously signalled its intent to operate as a managing general agent (MGA) in the insurance sector. MGAs are specialized intermediaries that handle underwriting and claims on behalf of insurance companies, giving them more operational control than typical brokers.
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