QLM Life & Medical Insurance Company Q.P.S.C. (QLMI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Qatar Life Medical Conference Call. Please note that this call is being recorded. I will now hand you over to our first speaker for today, Shahan from QNB. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Eli, and hello, everyone. I want to welcome you to QLM's First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. On this call from management, we have the company's CFO, Puneet Bakshi. So as usual, we will conduct this call with first management reviewing the company's results followed by a Q&A session. I will turn the call over now to Puneet. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Shahan, and good afternoon to everyone, and welcome to QLM Life & Medical Insurance Company's Q1 2026 Earnings Call. I will first go through the highlights and then we'll open the session for questions and answers. Insurance revenue for Q1 2026 saw a good growth of 22% and stood at QAR 364 million as compared to QAR 299.5 million in Q1 '25. In terms of gross written premiums, IFRS 4 perspective, Medical witnessed a growth of almost 16% and Life witnessed a growth of overall 7% over there. In terms of GWP growth, there were 15 -- it was an overall portfolio on Life and Medical combined, it was a 15% growth. And Q1 stood GWP terms, it stood at QAR 866 million versus QAR 752 million in Q1 2025. Coming back to insurance service expense it increased also again by 25%. It stood at QAR 359 million as compared to QAR 287.6 million in Q1 '25. Most of that is because of the QIC UAE portfolio, the 25% reinsurance, what we had picked up. And we had already mentioned in our earlier calls that we are trading very cautiously that we are retaining only 1% and 99% is being further placed on reinsurance. And that's the reason if we move down, the net expenses or the net results from the reinsurance operations this time were positive because the recoveries were all the claims which came in, 99% of that were recovered through the reinsurance route. And the net performance result of the reinsurance operations were positive by QAR 1 million as compared to QAR 4.5 million negative in Q1 '25. Overall, insurance service result was QAR 5.95 million as compared to QAR 7.3 million in Q1 '25. The net investment and other income rose by 11% and stood at QAR 13.3 million as compared to QAR 12 million in Q1 '25. The net financial results after discounting impact was QAR 20.5 million, 1% marginal increase over the QAR 20.34 million in Q1 '25. The nonattributable expenses, operating and depreciation combined were almost stable at QAR 5 million in quarter 1 '26 versus quarter 1 '25. Overall, profit after tax was 1% higher than last year, QAR 15.3 million as compared to QAR 15.2 million in Q1 '25. Overall, the solvency of the company was at 198%. And this is because slightly down from December '25. Why? Because of the first, it is the first quarter of the year. Most of the accounts are renewed and also because of the extra 22% increase jump in business we have written require more capital to write. On the business front, mainly from the mandatory side, it is status quo. There is no further information there. And of course, in the given situation, we expect that once the situation is resolved, then we might see some progress on that front. But as of now, there is no news on it. It's a status quo thing. On the UAE portfolio, yes, it has increased. And as we said that we are trading very cautiously with only a 1% minimal retention. And yes, with that, I'll open the house for question-and-answer sessions. We'll be more than happy to address any queries.

[Operator Instructions]

While we are waiting for questions, Puneet, I have a couple of questions on my own. First of all, you had the insurance revenue, the growth was very good. Can you just give us like what happened there, like the 22% growth, like, where did it come from?

So Shahan, most of the growth, if I will -- so there are 2 -- I will split it into Life and Medical. Life portfolio grew by almost 7% to 8% overall. And I'm talking now in GWP terms, gross written premium, because this QAR 364 million is IFRS 17. Now to understand it clearly, there was a growth in life portfolio around 7% to 8%. On the Medical side, the growth was almost 16%. Much of the growth was because of the UAE portfolio. But other than that, I would rather say, attribute around 10% growth because of the UAE and 6% to 7% growth because of the new accounts and increase in premium of existing accounts, which were renewed by us. So overall, when we combine together on a Life and Medical, there were around 15% to 16% growth in quarter 1 '26 compared to quarter 1 '25. And this in IFRS 17 terms has translated to 22%, which is QAR 364 million versus QAR 299.5 million in quarter 1 '25.

Okay. Got it. And my second question. So I mean, I noticed that Medical segment reported a loss in the first quarter, okay? But then like one of your main vendors, Ahli Hospital, they had a drop in revenues because of lower inpatient -- what do you call it, patients, okay? So I mean, because they are a major vendor of yours, I mean, shouldn't your Medical have been maybe turned a profit? Can you just explain what happened?

Well, look, Shahan, we -- as I said, we are doing now attacking the challenge from 2 perspectives. One is from the premium perspective, of course, we are cleaning the book, and we are also raising the premiums wherever possible to match the claims -- previous claims experience based on that. And having said that, on the claims side, we are also trying to renegotiate our structure, the overall contract structure with at least the top providers and one of that is Al Ahli and of course, we have been quite successful in doing that. Very recently, we had a renegotiation of the entire structure with Al Ahli Hospital, which has more than pleased to confirm it has already been formalized and signed off as well. Which is expected that as we progress through the year, which will yield some fruitful results in terms of cost containment on the claims side as well. So yes, and for some time, there was some [ too and fro ] with Al Ahli, yes. And in that -- because I can't comment on their decrease in revenue on the Al Ahli side. But yes. What, I can, I mean, inform is that there was a couple of weeks where there was some [ too and fro ] happening and renegotiation exercises are going on. But at least, I'm happy to inform that, that same has got concluded, formalized and signed off. And sorry, and one more point to mention, like if you look at our segment-wise reporting on the -- I mean, Medical loss, if you compare Q1 '26 to Q1 25 it has got reduced from QAR 15.8 million to QAR 10.5 million. So I would rather see as a positive change that the portfolio is showing some indications of improvement. And hopefully, with all of our initiatives in place, we will be able to turn it around to a positive, profitable portfolio.

We have our first question from [ Nitika ] [indiscernible] of Franklin Templeton.

Hi, everyone. [ Nitika ] [indiscernible]. Can you hear me well?

Yes. Yes, [ Nitika ].

Okay. So I just wanted to understand what is the kind of growth we have observed in the Life segment. Sorry, I missed the initial comments of the presentation. So if you've already touched upon that, if you could just let me know on the kind of growth we've seen in the life and also on medical.