HDFC Life’s annual report shows a change of minus 23.99% in the remuneration of its managing director and chief executive, Vibha Padalkar, for the financial year that ended on 31 March 2026. A footnote under the same table sets out what that number leaves out.
The same table compares each director’s pay with that of the company’s median employee. For Padalkar the ratio is 88.92. The footnote says the company used “the remuneration actually paid during FY 2025-26”, and that the ratios “do not take into consideration, the differential remuneration accrued in FY 2025-26, pursuant to the revised remuneration approved by IRDAI in April, 2026”. Had the accrued amount been counted, it adds, Padalkar’s ratio would have been 97.38.
Part of her pay for the year, in other words, was approved after the year had ended. The footnote describes that amount as accrued in 2025-26, and the ratios leave it out. The same footnote applies to the executive director and chief financial officer, Niraj Shah, whose ratio would have been 53.00 instead of 48.58.
Where the regulator appears in the report
The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India appears in more than one place in HDFC Life’s description of how it pays its executives. The report states that variable pay is capped at 300% of fixed pay, includes cash as well as share-linked instruments, and is subject to deferment “in line with the prevailing IRDAI CG Regulations”. Padalkar’s re-appointment by the board, for five years from 12 September 2026, was made “subject to the approval of the shareholders and the IRDAI”.
The figure in the governance report
The corporate governance report gives a separate figure for her year: ₹949 lakh, of which ₹618 lakh was fixed pay and ₹331 lakh variable. The report notes that fixed pay includes contributions to provident fund, gratuity, superannuation and national pension funds. Her entry, with that breakdown, is in our FY26 pay table.
Sources
- HDFC Life, Integrated Annual Report FY 2025-26, Report on Corporate Governance (quantitative disclosure, remuneration policy, service contracts) and Annexure 4, disclosures on managerial remuneration, note 3
