HDFC Life to decide on IPO in July, work on merger with Max Life later

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26 Aug, 2025 12:21

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HDFC Life, one of the country’s leading private sector life insurance companies, will decide on the initial public offering (IPO) in its Board meeting in July, confirmed a senior official of the company.

“IPO will happen first for sure. The merger will take its own sweet time to happen. We will decide on the IPO dates in our Board meeting in July. The reworking on the merger would be post the IPO. We cannot keep waiting as we are ready to go public,” said the company official.

The meeting of the Board of directors of Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC) is scheduled to be held on Wednesday, July 26, 2017 while its subsidiary HDFC Life's Board of directors will be meeting on July 17.

In June 2016, Max Financial Services and HDFC had said they had received a board approval for the merger of their life insurance businesses, Max Life and HDFC Life, respectively.

On asking if there is a possibility of the merger being called off, the official said that as on today the merger is on. "It could be re-worked and mostly it should happen."

The merger of HDFC Life and Max Life, which was announced in August 2016, ran into rough weather after the insurance regulator Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) refused to approve the merger structure in its current form.

Here, Max Life was to merge with its holding company Max Financial Services first, which would, in turn, would merge with HDFC Life. Since Max Financial Services is already listed, HDFC Life would get auto-listed post the merger.

However, after the application seeking in-principle approval was sent to Irdai, in November 2016, the regulator expressed concerns around Section 35 of the Insurance Act 1938, which does not allow merger between one insurance business and another (non-insurance) business.

In this particular case, Max Financial Services was a non-insurance company.

As per the agreed valuation and exchange ratio, the relative valuation of HDFC Life and Max Life was decided to be 69 percent and 31 percent, respectively.

HDFC Group was to own a 42.5 percent stake in the merged entity, with Standard Life holding 24 percent and Max Group 6.6 percent.