Insurance Zurich Group grows in all business segments

The Zurich Group remains on course for growth. In the first nine months of the year, income in property and casualty insurance (P&C) continued to rise thanks to further increases in rates. The Group also recorded growth in new life insurance business.

From January to September, gross premiums in the P&C segment rose by 4 percent to USD 36.1 billion, as Zurich announced on Thursday. The insurance sales figure published since the changeover to IFRS increased by 6 percent to 33.3 billion in the reporting period. On a comparable basis, the increase here is 5 percent.

The positive momentum of the first half of the year continued due to rising premium rates in the corporate and private customer business, Zurich wrote. Gross premiums in business with corporate customers increased by 2 percent, with US agricultural insurance acting as a brake. With private customers, the increase was 10 percent, also thanks to 5 percent higher rates.

Meanwhile, the natural catastrophes of recent weeks also had a negative impact on Zurich's accounts. In Florida, Hurricane Helene is likely to have caused costs of 160 million dollars and Milton even 200 million dollars. Overall, the natural catastrophe losses had a negative impact of 3.4 percentage points on the combined ratio after nine months, compared with 3.1 points in the previous year.

Pension business grows

In life insurance, the focus in the nine-month update is on new business: the cash value of premiums from new business was 4 percent higher than the previous year at 12.6 billion dollars; adjusted, this figure rose by 6 percent. Here, Zurich scored particularly well in the business with unit-linked pension solutions with bank distribution partners.

The US partner Farmers, on the other hand, increased gross premiums by 4 percent to 21.5 billion dollars. The combined ratio, an indicator of the profitability of the business, improved significantly by 15 percentage points to 93.5 percent. Zurich provides services for Farmers and receives fees for these services. These increased by 6 percent to 2.90 billion.

The Group does not disclose any profit figures for the first nine months, but does provide information on the capital situation. The capital ratio of the Swiss Solvency Test (SST) was an estimated 224 percent at the end of September. At the end of June, the ratio was as high as 232 percent. Zurich explains the decline primarily with the falling interest rate level.

New targets at the Investor Day

"The results of the past nine months confirm the strong momentum in all of Zurich's business areas," the new CFO Claudia Cordioli is quoted as saying in the press release. The Group is well on track to exceed all current targets.

In the strategy program, which will end in 2025, Zurich is aiming for a return on equity to operating profit of 20 percent and annual earnings per share growth of over 10 percent. The Group will present new targets for the years 2026 to 2028 at an investor conference in London on November 21.

SDA