An employee of ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company inadvertently uploaded undisclosed information about its third quarter earnings as a personal WhatsApp status, days before the planned release.
The named individual, who disseminated the information after market close on Friday, “deleted the position” within an hour, the ICICI Bank Ltd unit said in a stock exchange filing on Saturday (January 10, 2026). ICICI Lombard said it has initiated an internal investigation as per the rules of India’s securities market regulator.
It was the latest such mishap in India’s $5.2 trillion stock market, marking a similar case of Hatsun Agro Products Ltd. when an employee accidentally leaked draft quarterly results on WhatsApp.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India has over the past few years tightened rules governing the handling of unpublished information by employees of listed firms, including directing companies to create a framework to track ownership of such data. Although these incidents have been isolated, they reignite concerns over insider trading and information leaks at the world’s fifth-largest stock exchange.
In 2017, a SEBI investigation began in connection with the alleged leak of the company’s earnings on WhatsApp groups. At that time, SEBI had directed companies including HDFC Bank Ltd, Tata Motors Ltd and Axis Bank Ltd to investigate the leak of their financial information on social media platforms.