WR Berkley more than doubles Q1 net profit to $590.6m on 15% GWP gain

Property/casualty insurer  WR Berkley Corporation more than doubled its first quarter profits to $590.6 million and secured what it called “record quarterly underwriting income” at $274.4 million.

Gross written premiums rose 15.1% year on year to $2.86 billion, led by 16.1% increase in the insurance lines ahead of 8.8% growth in the reinsurance and monoline excess division.

“The majority of our businesses expanded, particularly in the E&S and specialty markets," management said of premium growth.

“Rate increases remained above expected loss cost trends for the majority of our lines of business,” management said.

Rate and exposure growth was credited with taking 2.3 percentage points off the GAAP combined ratio. That included 1.1 point from the loss ratio to 59.5% and 1.2 points from the group expense ratio. Loss ratios were down more notably insurance, but offset by a rise in reinsurance/monoline excess.

Management put 1.3 points of the combined ratio to catastrophe losses of $28.8 million.

“We remain focused on our total risk-adjusted return strategy and expect relative market stability in most parts of our business,” management said. “Our underwriting and investment portfolios remain well-positioned for the inflationary environment.”

Q1 earnings were further padded by the previously announced pre-tax gain on the sale of a real estate investment in London in excess of $300 million (ex-FX impact and transaction costs).

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