Zurich likes US property, but can’t be tempted to cat exposures

Zurich Insurance Group may press for growth primarily in non-cat US property, especially in middle-market channels, and would gladly take on most other US commercial lines where markets have not turned soft, a top company official has indicated.

Commercial property is the Zurich “standard line of business” in the US, “so if you look at where we focus for growth, that would be a key area,” CFO George Quinn (pictured) told his company’s Q1 earnings call under questioning.

The caveat: Zurich will be pushed out of some of the market’s loftier growth rates thanks to its own aversion to nat cat. “We’re trying to make sure we don’t pick up a lot of cat exposure in the process,” Quinn said.

No likely outperformance for property catastrophe rates is likely to reduce that nat cat aversion, Quinn claimed. A “more significant price reaction” in property catastrophe and resulting lag in growth vs cat-friendlier peers “wouldn’t be enough to tempt us back into it,” Quinn said.

Elsewhere, US commercial lines are largely set to harden save for workers comp, where returns nonetheless remain “quite attractive “ and some financial lines, chiefly D&O and cyber.

“With that exception, we’d be happy to push for growth in most of the other lines of business,” Quinn said.

US commercial insurance was core to Zurich’s top bragging point in its pre-release of Q1 premium growth. P&C insurance revenue rose 7% year on year in Q1, including 11% growth on a like-for-like basis, driven by “strong growth in commercial insurance and further improvement in pricing,” management had said.

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