February 2004/4

The world’s most valuable insurer AIG has posted fourth quarter profits of $2.71bn, or $1.03 per share, with higher general insurance premiums and revenues contributing to the bottom line.

Aon’s 2003 results were broadly in line with analysts’ expectations, with net earnings growing by more than a third and positive work done on de-leveraging the balance sheet with more debt being repaid early. But despite this progress, operating earnings

Hannover Re’s upbeat assessment of 2004 renewals has encouraged the French bank BNP Paribas to upgrade its outlook on the German reinsurer.

Bermudian (re)insurer PXRe said on Wednesday (Feb 11, 2004) that its fourth-quarter net income had risen 71 percent from a year earlier, on the back of growth in its core catastrophe and risk excess lines of business.

A fourth quarter deficit was inevitable for the Bermudian giant XL Capital after a previously announced pre-tax charge of $694mn, and the operating loss of $2.54 per share was roughly in line with analysts’ expectations (First Call consensus $2.51).

Struggling insurance group CNA provided a fillip to its de facto owners, the Loews Corporation, after reporting its first below 100 percent combined ratio for the fourth quarter – the first time for more than four years.

Further rate increases and winning new businesses enabled reinsurance giant Swiss Re to grow premiums by 7 percent at the recent 1 January renewals.

The opaque but growing trend of brokers charging payments from insurers to place business with them has been attacked by an influential US think tank as “potentially damaging”.