ICICI Lombard official accidentally shares draft Q3 results on WhatsApp, days before Board meeting

ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company informed on Saturday, 10 January, that one of its key officials accidentally shared some information about unaudited draft financial results of the company for the quarter and nine months ended on December 31, 2025 on their personal WhatsApp status.

The information was posted on January 9 at approximately 5:44 pm, according to a regulatory filing by ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company.

The exchange filing read, “We would like to inform you that a designated person of the Company inadvertently uploaded certain information pertaining to an unaudited draft financial results of the Company for the quarter and nine months ended December 31, 2025, on the personal WhatsApp Status on January 9, 2026, at around 5:44 pm.”

The company's board meeting is scheduled to be conducted on 13 January 2026 to consider and approve audited financial results and audited financial statements for the quarter and nine months ended on December 31, 2025.

The official removed the post within an hour of being aware of the incident, the filing said.

In line with good corporate governance and as a precaution, the company has notified the stock exchanges about the incident, it added."

“As a precautionary measure and in compliance with good corporate governance practices, the Company is reporting this incident to the Stock Exchanges,” the filing read.

Warning for investors

The company has warned investors not to depend on any financial information unless it has been officially released following approval by the board of directors.

The draft financial results may change during the ongoing audit and have not been approved by the board of directors, it said.

According to the filing, ICICI Lombard will inform the Audit Committee and the Board of Directors about this incident at the upcoming meeting. It has also initiated an Internal Inquiry in accordance with SEBI (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations, 2015, the Company's Insider Trading Code, and other applicable policies. Once the inquiry is concluded, the company will share the results with the stock exchanges.

Not the first time

Deepak Shenoy, founder of Capitalmind Financial Services, questioned how the financial results of companies are being shared via WhatsApp.

In a post on the social media platform X, Shenoy wrote, “This is weird, two companies announcing the same thing - the revelation of results by accident in a WhatsApp status.”

Notably, ICICI Lombard is not the first company to inform exchanges regarding such an incident. Earlier, a senior executive at Hatsun Agro Product Ltd. accidentally shared the company’s draft quarterly financial results on their personal WhatsApp Status.

The company in an exchange filing on 5 January said, “one of our Key Managerial Personnel, while sharing (internally with the Accounts department of the company) the first cut draft of the unaudited financial statements of the Company for the quarter ended 31 December 2025, inadvertently uploaded the draft figures [which may constitute certain Unpublished Price Sensitive Information of the Company] to his personal Whatsapp Status at about 5.00 pm yesterday.”