Max Financial Services Limited (MFSL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and welcome to the Max Financial Services Limited Q2 and H1 FY '26 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Nishant Kumar, Chief Financial Officer of Max Financial Services Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining Max Financial's earnings call for the quarter ended September 30, 2025. We are pleased to present our quarter 2 financial year '26 results, which are now available on our website as well as on the stock exchanges. Joining me today are Mr. Sumit Madan, Managing Director and CEO; and Mr. Amrit Singh, Chief Financial Officer of Axis Max Life Insurance. With that, I would like to invite Sumit to share the key developments and performance highlights from the second quarter of financial year '26. Over to you, Sumit.

Thank you, Nishant, and good morning, everyone. At the onset, I really want to thank all of you for taking the time out for this call. In my new capacity as the MD and CEO, I'm genuinely honored to take on this role and very excited about the opportunities ahead. Axis Max Life, as you all know, has always been built on strong fundamentals and a clear sense of purpose. And that gives me utmost confidence as we look to the future. My focus will be on amplifying our core priorities, namely strengthening our customer-first approach, accelerating digital and data-led growth, deepening our partnerships and driving sustainable long-term value for all the stakeholders. We've, in fact, made some very strong progress on these fronts, and my goal is to build on that momentum, including execution with discipline while nurturing the culture and purpose that always defines us. Before I get into the progress achieved on strategic areas, I would like to mention that on the regulatory front, the recent GST changes have further improved the affordability of insurance products, and we have passed on the full benefit to all our customers. We believe this will support stronger demand over the medium to long term. In fact, early signs of increased traction, particularly in the protection segment are already visible. While the nonavailability of the input tax credit may have a short-term impact on annualized margin, we remain very confident in our ability to offset this through focused initiatives. These include distributor renegotiations, cost optimization and operational efficiencies. As a result, we are maintaining our earlier sales and margin guidance. Let me now take you through the key developments across our strategic focus areas for the first half of FY '26. The first one, friends, is sustainable and predictable growth. Continuing our strong performance, our individual adjusted first year premium grew by 18% in H1 FY '26, which, in fact, is more than twice that of the private sector growth at 8%, while the overall industry expanded by just 2% Consequently, our private market share improved by 83 basis points, reaching 10.1%. Even on a 2-year CAGR, we delivered 24% growth, well ahead of the private sector 16% and in fact, more than double the industry's growth rate of 11%, a clear reflection of the strength and resilience of our franchise. In quarter 2 FY '26, individual adjusted FIP grew by 14%, again, outperforming both the private sector, which stood at 8% and the overall industry at 1% -- on an APE basis, we recorded 15% growth driven from both our proprietary and the bancassurance channel. Our proprietary channels continue to be a cornerstone of growth for Axis Max Life Insurance. Last 3-year CAGR from these channels stand at a very impressive 39%. In fact, our online business delivered a remarkable 68% CAGR and is supported by the sustained growth, sustained strength of our offline distribution network. Within offline proprietary, our agency channel has seen significant expansion with the agent force growing from around 61,000 in FY '22 to now almost 1.42 lakhs. alongside the addition of, of course, 150 new branch units over the past 3 years. Additionally, our service to sales approach, supported by continued investments in digitizing the sales management process has been instrumental in driving growth across our cross-sell vertical. On this strong foundation, our offline proprietary channels recorded 26% APE growth in Q2 FY '26, while the online business grew 14%, resulting in an overall 22% growth from the proprietary channels during this quarter. Our partnership business also continues to gain traction, growing at 10% in Q2 in APE terms, supported by the scaling up of the partnerships we've built over the past 2 years. These new partnerships in banking and the broking space now collectively contribute around 5% of the individual APE. Driven by strong execution, product suite and technologically progress, we have been able to ensure that our counter share in all new banca partnerships is now well over 25%. Another one of our key strategic growth area has been the NRI segment, which continues to deliver strong consistent performance with about 13% of total sales coming from this segment. To further strengthen our presence in this space, we have received the SEZ approval and NOC from IRI and provisional approval from IFSCA to establish an office in GIFT City. This office will serve as a strategic hub, enabling us to expand access, improve service delivery and capture the increasing opportunities within this growing market. To further enhance our reach and diversify our distribution footprint, we added 31 new partners across the retail and group segments during the first half of FY '26, further strengthening our multichannel presence and setting a solid foundation for future growth. Point two that I really want to bring out is around product innovation to drive margins. At Axis Max Life, we remain deeply focused on driving product innovation to deliver sustainable value for all our customers, employees, partners, investors and the broader community. Our nonparticipating savings products continue to perform strongly following the Q1 launch of Smart wipe, helping us maintain a well-balanced product mix. Protection remains a preferred segment for us. Our award-winning retail protection products have led us to attain the highest market share during H1 FY '26 with a 34% growth rate in pure protection category. Consequently, the total retail protection and health segment contributed to 13% of overall sales with 36% growth, supported by 37% wider attachment rate. In addition, group credit protection business is also growing steadily with a 24% growth in Q2, well ahead of the industry average. Our annuity business grew by 85% in H1 FY '26 and 122% in quarter 2 FY '26, driven by overall a very strong execution on the retail and the corporate annuity pool. We recently launched our annual retirement study, well known as Iris India Retirement Index survey with the fifth addition, covering more than 2,200 households across 28 cities. Iris measures how prepared Indian steel for retirement on a scale of 0 to 100. We are happy to note that the index has improved from 44% to 48% in led by higher health preparedness while financial and emotional readiness remains stable. These findings do highlight the growing need for planning reaffirming the strategic importance of our annuity offerings in securing long-term financial well-being for our customers. As we move ahead, the third important piece to highlight is our approach towards being a very customer-centric organization. At Axis Max Life, our customers always remain at the heart of everything we do. We are deeply committed to building relationships founded on trust, transparency and service excellence. Our focus on delivering superior customer experiences continues to set us apart and is reflected in our market-leading retention and satisfaction metrics. We continue to lead the industry in 13-month persistency by number of policies as per Q1 FY '26 rankings and hold the second position for both '25 and 37-month persistency on the same metric. In quarter 2 of FY '26, our 13-month persistency stood at 83% by the 25-month persistency, reached an all-time high of 76%, up nearly 500 basis points year-on-year. Our Net Promoter Score improved to 57%, up from a baseline of 52% at FY '25 exit. Touch point NPS improved to -- sorry, touch point NPS improved to 59% from 55% earlier and relationship NPS improved from 50% to 54%, demonstrating strong robust customer engagement and satisfaction. We've also made strong progress in grievance resolution with agreements incidence rate improving to 38% in quarter 2 FY '26 from 45% in quarter 2 FY '25. Together, all these outcomes, reaffirm our unwavering commitment to customer centricity, which remains at the foundation of our sustainable long-term growth and the trust that defines Axis Max Life brand. Another important area where the organization has really focused is around digitization for our operational efficiency. Our digital transformation journey continues to deliver tangible and measurable gains across customer experience, sales enablement and operational efficiency, strengthening Axis Max Life position as a digitally led insurer of the future. Our mobile app continues to scale rapidly with over 4 lakh installation within 100 days. and 21% new to digital users, supported by some very strong user feedback reflected in our ratings, which is 4.7 on iOS and 4.8 android. We continue to create seamless journey for our customers, leveraging digital ecosystem, data and analytics and a very superior user experience. This has led to industry-leading NPS score for our digital platforms. Our customer website -- customer service website, NPS is now at 71 and e-commerce buying stands at 77. Also important to note, we ensured the full GST compliance across all digital journeys and core insurance platform within just 2 days, enabling the timely issuance of over 15,000 policies while maintaining a seamless customer experience. Our digital distribution platform, M space, as we call it, is now scaled to all proprietary channels and to Axis Bank partnership with a very high adoption rate of almost 90%, leading to higher productivity in our cross-sell channel. Even on the sales enablement front, the sales navigator platform, a real-time analytics and incentive management tool is now adopted by over 75% of our sales force across agency, DSF and access channels, further enhancing the productivity and the performance visibility. We continue to leverage AI cross-sell engine for our proprietary and partnership business to generate personalized offers. Each offer includes the best product, the next best product, preapproved sum assured and a conversational pitch for the sellers. This has resulted in approximately INR 500 crores of new sales. In fact, even in risk and underwriting, we are leveraging automation to enhance both precision and scale, a comprehensive suite of risk models. Our fully integrated into our onboarding journey, ensuring meticulous due diligence based on the risk category. This integration has yielded potential savings of INR 550 crores by fraudulent claim avoidance. Additionally, our AI-driven income estimation model, utilizing alternative data sources such as CIBIL account aggregator have all revolutionized the financial underwriting. This innovation has, in fact, allowed 30% of our term portfolio to undergo financial underwriting without the need for any physical documentation, resulting in faster in journey decisions. Our Gen AI initiatives continue to scale across the enterprise. Eli, our virtual HR business partner now engages approximately 17,000 frontline sales employee with a 51% engagement rate. Eli supports continuous listening, personalized communication and assist managers and HR in resolving employee concerns, which contributes to lower attrition levels. ConvergeProp, our AI-based e-mail resolution engine efficiently handles up to 30% of customer e-mail volume. This automation leaps [Technical Difficulty] and has resulted in a 20% reduction in support headcount. Additionally, our Gen AI immersion program for senior leadership has identified 30-plus high-impact enterprise use cases to be deployed over the next 2 years, further emitting AI-driven innovation across all aspects of business. To summarize FY '26, it's been an exciting year. FY '26 continues to demonstrate strong momentum with robust growth across key markets driven by our focus on innovation, customer centricity and operational excellence. Even as global developments continue to influence the market dynamics, we remain confident in our ability to meet our guidance and deliver sustained value creation for all stakeholders. With that, let me now hand over to Amrit Singh who will take you through the financial performance for the quarter.

Thank you, Sumit, and good morning, everyone. We had made our presentations live last evening. I will just kind of speak about a few highlights, few financial highlights. At MFS level, the revenue, excluding investment now stands at INR 5,090 crores, a growth of 18% in the first half. MFSL consolidated profit after tax is at INR 92 crores -- it's lower than last year, primarily due to the fair value change account that India is accounting in which it has to be taken. And also, the GST expense underlying Axis Max Life franchise as kind of Axis Max Life gross written premium and renewal premium both have grown healthy at 18%, touching INR 5,490 crores and INR 9,503 crores, respectively. Individual new business sum assured continues to grow at a healthy pace of 25% and has touched INR 2.16 lakh crores, and we are a #3 player with respect to total individuals are insured in the market. Embedded value ending 30th September 2025 is now INR 26,885 crores, a year-on-year growth of 15% -- the embedded value carries a onetime GST impact, which is on the back book of INR 268 crores. Annualized operating ROE is 13% -- this includes a positive operating variance of INR 13 crores. There is a marginal negative nonoperating variance of INR 9 crores, largely due to yield curve movements and which were offset by some gains in the equity. Policyholder OpEx to GWP is at 15.5%. During the quarter, we raised additional INR 800 crores of sub debt with IFC as a strategic partner to this particular round. This has sent in our solvency, which now stands at 208%. AUM are at INR 1.85 lakh crore, a growth of 9%. In H1 FY '26, the retail product mix is rebuild balanced, participating products at 13%, annuities at 8%, saving at 28%, prediction and held at 30 and Uli at 37%. Each of these categories have delivered healthy growth with the exception of ULIPs. The overall balancing of product mix has helped us expand our margins from 23.6% in quarter 2 FY '25 to 25.5% in quarter FY26. And for H1, the margins were expanded from 20.2% last year to 23.3% in this current year, which has led to a VNB growth of 27%. In the month of September, approximately 75% of sales were impacted due to GST credit disallowances, which contributes to around 0.6% of margin impact in first half. Thereby, the GST impact is close to 300 to 350 basis points on a run rate basis. However, despite this impact through a series of actions on costs, product mix, execution, we are confident that we will maintain the margin guidance that we had given earlier of improving the margins from the previous year and be in the range of 24% to 25%. This will be along with the higher than market growth that we have been delivering so far. So in conclusion, our agility in navigating regulatory shifts and market dynamics has been able to deliver a healthy operating performance. And with that, we'll be happy to take over questions. I'll hand it over to moderator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions]. The first question is from the line of Shreya Shivani from Nomura.

Congratulations on a great set of numbers. I have 3 questions. First is, as you highlighted, the impact of GST, if you do nothing would be a 300, 350 basis points annual Y-o-Y impact that we are talking about. So I just wanted to understand that when it comes to what is -- apart from cost, product mix when it comes to cost, what kind of negotiations are we done with our distributors? Or what kind of time lines do we have when it take us 1 quarter, 2 quarter effect? That's my first question. My second question is again on the GST cut, if you can help us understand in your product suite, which product gets impacted the most, which product gets impacted the lease? And how do you -- how would you manage the impact across the product category? Or some understanding of how each product responds to what has happened on the GST bit. My third question is on the channel and the I wanted to understand on the channel strategy. So your partnership channel, obviously, your proprietary channel has been running faster than the partnership channel. Within the partnership channel, what has been the trends with the banker partners, and particularly with Axis Bank? And yes, that would be my third question.

Thank you for those questions. I'll take the first 2 and I'll request Sumit to speak about the third one. Firstly, you're right. If you do nothing, that is the impact, 300, 350 basis points. But there are series of things that we are trying to do at our end, which beyond distribution negotiation is also product mix. Let's say across our vendor partner looking at our outsourcing and sourcing decisions as well. With respect to specific negotiations with the distributor, we will not like to kind of comment because these are individual conversations that we will do with our distributors and some of these conversations are underway and will require couple of months before some closure and have come through. I think the way we are approaching this problem is -- and I think this is also an answer to your second question, that which product gets impacted the most. There are products which are impacted structurally and there are products which are more tactical impact. I think the ones which are structurally impacted, which are more in the lines of ULIP and participating design, we are working with the distributors to see how the same can be tweaked. On other product categories, there are more tactical, and we will leverage tactical mechanics to solve for those.

Shreya, on the channel strategy, you'll be happy to note and you must have seen the progress over the last few quarters. There is a very good mix between the partnership and the proprietary channel now. Propriety channel low constitutes almost 46% of the total business and the remaining 55%, of course, coming from the partnership channel. Our new banks, and we've acquired almost across various financial players, 31, like we mentioned in H1, around almost 90 plus odd over the last financial year. These new partnerships have now started adding quite a significant revenue to us. On the new bank side, if I look at the last 6 banks, as an example, out of these in 3 banks, our counter share is actually already more than -- we are the #1 player as far the counter share in 3 out of those 6 banks are concerned. So I think in terms of growth, it's a very healthy growth as far as various partnership channels also are concerned. Axis Bank in you specifically as we have seen a growth of almost around 7% as far as Axis Bank is concerned. And in the remaining partnership channels, our growth, in fact, has been much faster. Our growth, if you look at the overall story as well as the partnership channels are concerned, we've seen a growth of around 14% coming from Yes Bank and some of the other players, we've seen a growth of 100% plus coming between HY FY '25 and HY FY'26. There is a growth of 111% in the new acquisitions that we've done over the last 2 years.

Got it. Just a follow-up on -- because the channel strategy, I wanted to understand it better. There has been some media -- I mean, the Chairman of RedEye in some media reports has been talking about how insurance is a high-cost industry, and he would want to bring it to medium cost. I understand some of the team may be referring towards the health insurance product specifically. But just wanted to understand your perspective on how to deal with such -- I mean how are you thinking about the entire distribution strategy, along with the cost structure in mind because the Chairman of RedEye making speaking in these terms.

As things kind of stand today, there is an expenses of management, which is defined by the regulator. Axis Max Life actually operates well below the threshold. And all efforts on a progressive are actually to optimize for that expenses of management at an overall level. Given the nature of the product, and I think the regulator understands that as well, it does require a strong distribution footprint to carry this product category -- and that enablement needs to be provided. But as time goes by, I think efficiency always comes through, and that's how we think about it.

The next question is from the line of Avinash Singh from Emkay Global.

A few questions. The first 1 is more on accounting clarification. So if I see a material divergence this quarter between the accounting profit or GBP of match and Axis Life. Is it just -- I mean, part of my notes, is it just that IndAS and in Gap divergence? Or is there something more? And if that divergence broadly, you can see sort of a explain what are the key factor here in the divergence. And related to accounting another question, if I see your EV walk, where you have explained this GST impact around INR 260-odd crores, that I see you take it out of NAV. I mean, a simple entertain would suggest that, okay, if all the future year DSIT losses. So it should be ideally part of the VIF adjustment. Is there something I mean here again my understanding incorrect? So these are on accounting. And the second question more from a strategy, I mean you have rightly highlighted that over the last 5 years versus in the backdrop of industry growth at 10%, you have grown at 15-odd percent. Now if I were to ask them in, Sumit, now because you have just taken over, over the next 5 years now because you have kind of your -- the strategy and product and channel strategy in place. And also you know the industry dynamics. Do you have that kind of a same kind of confidence or kind of aspirations to repeat that last 5 years in the backdrop, if the industry were to grow at 10%, can you grow at 5% even from this list?

So I'll take the first 2, and I guess I'll request Sumit to come in for the third one. So Avinash, your observation is actually correct with respect to the accounting profit in MFSL, which is an IndAS mechanics. The difference between MAX financial service, Max Life Axis Max Life profit, and IndAS profit is that in addition to the profit dip which has happened in Axis Max Life Insurance 5due to GST impact where from INR 231 crores of it after tax that we had got last year, we are right now reporting INR 49 crores. That's INR 82 crore drop. The residual drop is just because of the IndAS accounting standard, which actually measures mark-to-market movements all through the P&L. And there is nothing else beyond that particular element on this particular one. On the GST impact, it's just a representation to just show what the GST impact is. It is -- it should be from bit-only it is not out of the net worth. And that's how you should kind of read it.

I think on your next question as far as the next few years are concerned coming from a different industry now into insurance, I look at it as a huge opportunity as well as what the industry offers to us. and I'm not new to Axis Max any longer I've been here for almost 2 years, so very much involved as part of the strategy. Like I said in the opening address also, there are some key parameters we are focusing on. We've looked at segments very closely. We spoke about NRI as a case in point. But I think most importantly, what stands out is the continuity factor for us. And I spoke about that in the initial also. So there is a very sustainable and predictable growth, which is there. In terms of some of the other focus areas like I alluded the entire digitization for operational efficiency is something that we've taken up with a lot of deal in the organization. Customers always have remained at the center of Axis Max Life and the same trend again continues. And even in terms of the product innovation, the idea is to give the best product to the customer, but at the same time, driving margins as well. So over the next 5 years, to answer it specifically, I'm very optimistic as far as the industry is concerned, I'm both optimistic and very excited about the future that works for us. We've always maintained that we'll be able to deliver better than what the industry is doing by almost around 300 to 500 bps. And I feel very confident about this.

The next question is from the line of Swarnabh Mukherjee from B&K Securities.

Congrats on a good set of numbers. So first question, sir, just wanted to understand the VNB development for the quarter. I think year-on-year, it's 190 bps. Now you said 60 bps coming due to the GST impact. So adjusting for that, that 250-odd bps, if you can break it down between how the product mix has -- how much has come from the product mix? How much maybe product level improvements? And if there has been any operating leverage that has played out during this quarter. If you could give that color, it would be very helpful. Second is, in terms of growth, as you had mentioned that you are maintaining the growth guidance. But if I look at your base in second half, it is slightly more benign than what we had in the first half. So are we being conservative in kind of maintaining and not upgrading our growth guidance? Just wanted to understand, particularly given the fact that we have a leadership position on the online channel, and given that the outlook for protection-oriented products improved meaningfully because of the GST changes, can we not see a better growth and better margin outcome also coming out from that? And third, again, on the product mix, I just wanted to understand that are we like comfortable with the current product mix? Or can the ULIP mix be reduced further? Because I can see that in the banca channel, it has come down meaningfully. So is there any further headroom to reduce ULIP? And lastly, on operating ROEV, sir, so if I were to think about over the next couple of years and given that there might be some impact coming from the interest rate side on the unwind factor. How should we think about our operating ROEB going forward? These will be my questions.

I think I'll take most of these questions. Firstly, on the VNB, I think your question is where is the improvement in margins coming through. A large part of this answer is product mix led up some bit of support also coming in certain categories like protection and annuity, but large part of this is coming out of product -- on the growth guidance, look, I mean, on an AP basis, we are growing 15%. We had given for the full year goodrising between 15%, 17%. So I think there holding on to that number, your observation is right that on a very tough base, and that's what we said that a 2-year CAGR is right now touching 24% kind of level on a very strong base we have done well. So we're hopeful that in the second half, we'll be better, but right now, just holding on to the guidance if we have a positive surprise to deliver, I'm sure that we delight you as well. Product mix, I think we have balanced -- and 1 of the things around the -- and largely, this has come because certain discrete steps and actions have been taken in our partnership channels, especially Axis Bank, which you will recall last year was running at a higher plus that has been brought in line at around 50%. We don't see a need to go beyond it. It is important to understand that each category as a consumer and a consumer segment to it. Each of them is VNB additive and hence, kind of helps the organization at an overall level. But we feel that the mix is fairly balanced. We do have certain designs being launched on the participating side, which could see some latencies happening through the quarter. But generally, unit links in the last quarter does see a little bit of increase as the momentum of the sales also picks up. So I won't kind of indicate that there is more headroom to reduce ULIP, that's not how we think about it. Operating ROE, look, it's a mathematical number. You understand that as EV kind of builds up, there will always be as a portion of opening EV will start becoming smaller and smaller. Over the next 2, 3 years, we are comfortable remaining in the range of 18%, 19%, and that's what we will try to do and target.

Very helpful, Amit. Just a quick clarification on the first response. So you were saying it's largely coming out of the product mix. So I just wanted to understand that is there any operating leverage also component playing out to this because our growth has been fairly strong. And I'm just wondering if maybe our cost base would be kind of geared towards this growth, but is there we're getting something over and above that cost base and atopical scenario where in the future, if there is some at least transient impact on growth, can there be a deliver? So that's the reason why I asked the question.

No, I think on operating leverage, Panayouare aware and Sumit spoke about in his opening remarks that we have added offices and we are trying to augment a proprietary channel. So there is an investment strategy, which has also been in play for the last couple of years. So the sales and OpEx growth, our total expense growth has been in line with each other. I won't say that there is a big operating leverage which has kind of come through. But as time progresses, especially in proprietary channels, we do see significant bit of operating leverage, helping us as times unfold going forward.

The next question is from the line of Kushagra Goel from CLSA.

Most of my questions are answered. Just 1 first question on the protection side. So you are delivering quite strong growth on the total retail and health protection and you share that 34% is the pure protection I just wanted to know what was the pure protection growth this quarter last year. And similarly, for the rider attachment rate that is around 37% right now. What was that let's say, for the full year FY '21 and this quarter last year.

Yes. Thank you, Pasha. Very relevant one, Kushaga. In fact, we've been seeing protection growth across channels for the last year or so. To answer specifically, we've seen a 34% growth as far as pure protection is concerned. And this growth has come across Axis Bank. This growth has come across Banca channel. This growth has come across all our proprietary verticals as well. So we see a very strong momentum now. In fact, per GST, the movement time has only improved as far as protection is concerned. And we've been looking at the numbers post 22nd September week by week. Across industry and all the more so with AMLI, we've seen strong traction being built up on production week on week post 22nd September as well. On riders, it's 37% versus a 45% attachment last year, and those are the kind of numbers that we are looking at.

And protection was around 30% growth the year prior on which we are right now doing 34%, 36% kind of growth rate until end of September. Post that, there is some acceleration that we are seeing.

Secondly, sort of when you answered on the OpEx side. But despite our OpEx to GWP was quite low -- so just wanted to understand like how should we see this going forward? Was this just a timing thing? Or for the full year, we can see some improvement in our OpEx versus last year? I just wanted to get more color on that.

So OpEx, the growth has been around 11%. And as I told you that the GWP has grown at around -- so mathematically, if you keep growing your GWP faster than the OpEx ratio, you will continue getting an improvement in OpEx to GWP ratios. We do expect this trend to stay for full year as well.

The next question is from the line of Prayesh Jain from Motilal Oswal.

First question is on the GST hit. I think Mark, you mentioned INR 200 crore to INR 20 or INR 300 to 350.

300 to 350 on a run rate basis on basis if nothing is done.

So in that light, you had earlier guided for a VNB margin expansion of about 100 basis points for FY '26. Now how would you kind of guide for the margins for FY '26? Would you change that we expansion or you would want to increase or cut it? How should we look at it for the full year.

Yes. Paresh, I did speak in the opening remarks. I think we are holding on to the guidance. So we had indicated that we will improve margin to price, and it will be between 24%, 25%. We are holding on to that item.

And second is on the question -- second question is on the Axis Bank channel, right? Do you think that we have a lot of headroom here to kind of take the advantage of the brand that has been built now and especially in lower-tier cities and the growth that we have been reporting on the Axis Bank channel is quite muted right now. Do you think that this can be another driver for you going ahead? Or do you think that a 10% -- 7% to 10% kind of growth is something which is more doable at Axis Bank channel?

I think Axis is a very strong brand pressure. And addition of Axis, like you rightfully said, specifically in Tier 2, TSC locations are further up the momentum of sales for us. It's a very well-recognized, very respected brand. And obviously, we're getting a lot of benefit out of it. What we have done specifically -- while you see the growth number at 7%, what we've done is also a lot of changes as far as the product mix is concerned. And that's something we were very conscious about as far as change in the last quarter is concerned. Along with Axis, we are also focusing on some verticals within the bank where probably we can do more, some of the cross-sell around assets, emerging channel cards, those are the ones where we need to make use of the entire opportunity. So as we get into H2, I am actually very optimistic as far as the numbers coming from Axis from a growth rate perspective are concerned. They've done very well in terms of the late down strategy for and growth numbers at 7% have been pretty strong, and I'm looking forward to a far better number in H2.