Montpelier deal drives solid growth at Endurance
Endurance experienced substantial growth in almost all lines of business in the second quarter of 2016, largely driven by its acquisition of Montpelier Re but also by an expansion of its underwriting portfolio. Its profits for the period remained stable.
Endurance reported gross premiums written of $1.1 billion for the three month period ending June 30, an increase of 32 percent compared to the same period in 2015.
Specifically, the GPW for the company's insurance segment for Q2 2016 was $593.7 million, a 26.6 percent increase from last year.
The company's non-agriculture lines of business, which includes casualty and other specialty, professional lines and property, marine/energy and aviation lines of business grew 47.6 percent since a year ago, which Endurance attributes to the expansion of its underwriting by product and geography as well as the Lloyd's syndicate acquired from Montpelier in 2015.
The GPW of Endurance's reinsurance segment for this period was $543.2 million, a 38.5 percent increase from the same period in 2015.
Endurance's net income also increased to $76.6 million for Q2 2016, a 0.8 percent increase from $76 million for the previous year.
The company's combined ratio worsened slightly in the period reaching 92.6 percent compared with 85.5 percent for the same period a year earlier. This was largely due to a number of catastrophe losses including the Fort McMurray wildfires in Canada, the convective storms in Texas and Europe and the Kumamoto earthquake in Japan.
John Charman, chairman and chief executive officer, said: "Endurance's second quarter results demonstrated strong underlying underwriting profitability as reflected by our combined ratio of 92.6 percent.
“Our embedded risk management practices aligned with our comprehensive reinsurance and retrocessional programmes enabled us to achieve underwriting profitability in both business segments despite a number of severe global catastrophes and large risk losses across the industry.
“Our solid underwriting results benefited from our increased scalability and focused expense management resulting in a significantly improved general and administrative expense ratio."
"Strategically, the second quarter reflected our continued focused and diversified core underwriting expansion as evidenced by the 32.0 percent growth in our gross written premiums. In addition to our targeted growth across our global businesses, our successful renewal of the Montpelier portfolio also helped drive our expansion.
“The quick, effective and successful integration of Montpelier has enabled us to exceed our expense and capital synergy objectives; those important benefits are now clearly visible in our financial results. Endurance is well equipped and very well positioned to thrive in the current market, which is showing increasing signs of moderation."
