SCOR targets US P/C growth
SCOR has successfully delivered on its ‘Vision in Action’ targets on a normalised basis - profitability and solvency - and has ambitions for expansion with “growth assumptions in the range of 4 to 7 percent on a premium basis” for its new ‘Quantum Leap’ strategic plan, Frieder Knuepling, chief risk officer at SCOR, told Monte Carlo Today.
“We are quite clear in emphasising that we have two objectives: profitability and solvency. That’s something we’ve been doing consistently.
“We have a commitment to our shareholders in terms of profit that we want to generate,” Knuepling said.
To achieve this, he said, SCOR models potential outcomes of the developments over the next couple of years, then the reinsurer makes assumptions as it plots them on growth and pricing.
“Our growth assumptions are in the range of 4 to 7 percent on a premium basis on the plan horizon,” he said.
“We believe we have good opportunities for profitable growth, on the life and P&C sides.
“Starting with P&C, we have been historically been underweight in the US, but we continue to grow more quickly in the US than elsewhere.
“Most of the growth on the P&C side will continue to come from the US, where we have firmed up our position.
“SCOR is recognised as a very well rated company with a strong, clean balance sheet for many of its cedants, with a very high diversification profile,” Knuepling explained.
“We can continue to grow in a selective way and where we believe the balance between risk and return works out well.
“We believe there are some pockets of US casualty business which we can grow profitably. We’ve been quite underweight in this area, we allocate capital to this and the risk:return metrics work well. It’s diversifying well with our other exposures.
“We have more short-tail nat cat exposure on the P&C side and generally growing our P&C business results in diversification benefits because currently our life business is a little more than 50 percent of our business, and we like to keep a good balance between the two.
“We are underexposed to market and credit risks. Generally, we believe we can generate more value by allocating our resources to our areas of our reinsurance expertise.”
