11 May 2015 Insurance

Target non-traditional business to grow: IGI

Re/insurer International General Insurance (IGI), a Dubai-based insurance group with operations in Bermuda and London, recently posted a solid set of results for the first quarter of 2015.

Intelligent Insurer spoke to Wasef Jabsheh, the chief executive officer (CEO) of IGI, and Andreas Loucaides, UK CEO of IGI, about the company’s results, the current market and plans for the future.

“We’re delighted with the results for 2014. We expect to grow our business but we won’t allow this to happen at the expense of our combined ratio. Our gross written premiums are not as high as we planned for, but we never miss the bottom line. Every year we exceed plan with regard to net profit,” said Jabsheh.

He added that although the continuing soft market is tough, all of IGI’s lines performed well and provided returns that had been expected.

"I believe IGI is maintaining its underwriting discipline and we will be able to deliver a similar combined ratio going forward,” he said.

Loucaides agreed and added that the despite an incredible amount of competition, IGI has focused on select areas within the market that it sees as opportunities.

“Our biggest challenge is the competition, which is very sophisticated and very well known. We don’t want to grow the book to a level where we’re competing with the likes of composites. For us, it’s very much picking the existing products we have and identifying the brokers that operate in the regional space,” explained Loucaides.

“IGI’s growth has been incredibly organic. We’ve brought in experienced teams, focused on slow growth and concentrated on growing profitability rather than top line growth. IGI operates in territories which are not traditional,” he added.

One example of this is IGI’s involvement in political violence insurance. The company won’t get involved in the US, where this type of insurance is very competitive and depends on having very large lines and aggregate exposures. Instead, the company focuses on areas where it feels it has the expertise and knowledge base.

However, both executives agreed that growth within the UK was incredibly important to the company. According to Loucaides, there’s a lot of business coming to London brokers because of the lack of expertise in local markets in the Middle East, and as Middle East specialists, IGI can capture this business.

They also added that they were very pleased about Lloyd’s setting up a platform in Dubai, a place where the company established itself almost ten years ago. They expect Dubai to become a re/insurance hub, much like Singapore, with a flow of business on a faster and bigger pace than ever before.

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