Infinity Reports Quarterly Profit

NU Online News Service, Oct. 29, 4:11 p.m.EST?Infinity Property and Casualty Corp. posted a $15million third-quarter net profit, compared to net earnings of $15.3million for the same period in 2002.

The insurer's management emphasized that earnings without netrealized gains have shown an improvement.

"We continue to see strong underwriting results. If you excluderealized gains to get a better feel for the operating income, thenwe actually showed an improvement over last year," said RogerSmith, chief financial officer at Infinity Property andCasualty.

"We had quite a bit of realized gains last year, $5.4 millionpre-tax. So if you exclude realized gains, the operating income was$11.7 million one year ago, increasing to $14.5 million for thethird quarter this year," he told NationalUnderwriter.

Mr. Smith also pointed out that Infinity's combined ratioimproved, from 93.5 one year ago to 92 this third quarter.

"And net earned premiums were $163.9 million for the 2002 thirdquarter, versus $172.8 million for this year's third quarter.That's an increase of about five percent. Results for the thirdquarter show continued improvement on both an operating earningsand underwriting basis," Mr. Smith said.

Based in Birmingham, Ala., Infinity is the second-largest writerof policies for high-risk drivers in the United States, behindProgressive Corp. in Mayfield Village, Ohio.

Infinity went public on the NASDAQ Market in February. Prior toits initial public offering, it was owned by Cincinnati-basedAmerican Financial Group, which still holds about 38 percent stakein the company. The company primarily provides personal nonstandardauto policies. It posted more than $700 million in sales lastyear.