Marsh & McLennan President CEO Dan Glaser said he anticipated a "pretty tough year" for Guy Carpenter, the brokerage's reinsurance arm, given challenges in the reinsurance market overall.
During the Q&A portion of MMC's Q1 investor conference call, Glaser said, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript of the call, "I think what you're seeing [in the reinsurance market] would be multiple things. You've got higher levels of capacity. You have insurance companies—some of the large ones—retaining more risk. You have increasing alternative capacity and that creates a bit of a competitive activity on how some of the traditional reinsurers are trying to maintain their book in the face of income and capacity. But there's an awful lot of factors that are at play."
Given these factors, Glaser said he still expects growth at Guy Carpenter this year, but modest growth. Still, he said of the reinsurance brokerage, "It's one of our finest businesses—it's a true jewel and this is a year that we're going to focus on serving clients and getting new ones."
For the first quarter, Marsh says net income attributable to the company was $443 million, up from $413 million in 2013's first quarter.
Revenue was up 4% to $3.3 billion. For Risk and Insurance Services, revenue grew 4% to $1.8 billion. Within that segment, Marsh reported revenue of $1.45 billion, up 5%, while Guy Carpenter reported revenue of $381 million, up 2%.
Consulting revenue was up 5% to $1.4 billion.
© Arc, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.