Converium Posts Quarterly Profit
NU Online News Service, Oct. 29, 12:52 p.m. EST?Switzerland-based reinsurer Converium Holding AG posted net profit of $44.3 million for the third quarter, reversing a loss of $5.6 million from the year-ago period.
The reinsurer said its earnings figures benefited from solid premium growth and a low level of insurance claims, which offset a $14.3 million reserve boost for its U.S. life policies.
"The strong performance of our non-life segments, standard property-casualty reinsurance and specialty lines reflects Converium's strong global franchise and the disciplined execution of our strategy that allows us to benefit from the current attractive market conditions," said Chief Executive Officer Dirk Lohmann.
Converium's standard p-c reinsurance business represented some 38 percent of total net premiums written for the reinsurer.
The company said in the third quarter it had $338.9 million in p-c reinsurance net premiums written, up 11.2 percent from a year ago. The growth was spread across most lines of business, Converium said.
Property-casualty reinsurance has benefited from rising rates and efforts to boost the share of clients' business when renewing, explained Frank Schaar, executive vice president for standard p-c reinsurance at Converium.
"The profitable growth of standard p-c reinsurance was driven by the general third-party liability and property lines of business," Mr. Schaar said. "The non-life combined ratio of 92.6 percent for our standard p-c reinsurance segment for the first nine months of 2003 properly reflects the profitability of the business written in the last two years and modest claims from catastrophes."
Converium's specialty lines unit–which represented some 53 percent of total net premiums written for the reinsurer–reported $474.7 million in its net premiums written, a jump of more than of 41 percent compared to the year-ago period. The company noted the growth was spread across most lines of business, especially professional liability and other specialty liability, aviation and space, and agribusiness.
Headquartered in Zug, Switzerland, Converium Holding AG offers treaty and facultative coverage for risks including accident & health, credit & surety, e-commerce, third-party & professional liability, life, and special casualty. The company operates in more than 60 countries. In 2002, it posted $106.8 million in net income, with $3.4 billion in sales.
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