Covéa Insurance has today announced its financial results for 2013; the first full year since its formation in 2012 following the integration of the former MMA Insurance, Provident Insurance and Gateway Insurance businesses. The company is pleased to report a technical account profit of £15.0m (including allocated investment return) and a combined ratio of 98.8%, delivered in spite of a challenging competitive environment.
After adjusting the 2012 comparatives to show the full year results of the former Provident and Gateway businesses, the company has reported a 17% reduction in gross written premium, reflecting the company’s maintenance of pricing discipline in an extremely competitive market.
The reduction in written premium principally relates to the Personal Lines Motor account, where market rates fell to an extent that the company believes is unjustified by the more modest savings in claims costs that have been delivered by the LASPO reforms. In contrast, Commercial Lines GWP grew by nearly 10% over the year, as a result of a renewed focus on the development of this business under a new leadership team.
From a profitability perspective, both the Personal Lines Motor and Home accounts saw an improvement in the combined ratio on 2012. The Commercial Lines result however was adversely impacted by deterioration on prior year claims reserves.
Announcing the company’s results, James Reader, Chief Executive, commented: “A priority for last year was the completion of the integration of the three businesses that came together in October 2012 to form Covéa Insurance. Just how well we’ve achieved that goal is testament to the skills, effort and enthusiasm of our great team of people.
From a trading perspective, the Personal Lines market was undoubtedly challenging in 2013. While I would have been delighted to report growth in our first year as Covéa Insurance, we were simply not prepared to follow the market pricing down to levels which we don’t believe are sustainable. We will continue to take a disciplined approach to pricing, focusing on the maintenance of margins rather than volumes.
I’m delighted to say that our ongoing investments in our Commercial Lines team and capabilities are paying dividends and we grew by almost 10% during the year. 2014 will see us continuing to invest in expanding the breadth and scale of our Commercial Lines proposition.
Looking forward, I am very confident that Covéa Insurance has a bright future and is well placed to deliver profitable growth across all lines of business over the coming years.”
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