MS Amlin posts £61m first-quarter profit as catastrophe losses stay away

MS Amlin booked first-quarter after-tax profit of £61 million ($77 million), £21 million ahead of the same period last year. Its combined ratio came in at 87.7%, down from 92.6% a year earlier, Insurance Business America reported. The figures cover MS Amlin itself, not other MS&AD Group brands.

Nearly all of the swing came from the loss ratio, which dropped to 55.6% from 63.3%. The expense ratio moved the other way, to 32.1% from 29.3%. Insurance revenue rose from £458 million to £487 million, and the insurance service result climbed to £60 million from £34 million. Investment gains of £35 million, minus £6 million of insurance finance losses, left a net financial result of £29 million.

The report credits the improvement to better attritional loss experience and the absence of major natural catastrophe claims. A year earlier, California wildfire losses weighed on the North American property book and helped push the first-half combined ratio to 94.5%. No comparable event arrived this quarter.

Middle East-related losses trimmed the gains. MS&AD, the Japanese parent, had reportedly paused writing certain war-risk policies covering waters around Iran and Israel earlier in the year, but some losses still flowed through to MS Amlin's book in the quarter.

For US brokers, the more forward-looking item is MS Amlin's May launch of a Lloyd's property treaty consortium for North American placements. It pairs Syndicate 2001 with Nephila Syndicates 2358 and 2359, Hampden Syndicate 2689 and Apollo Syndicate 1969. Stephen Price, head of North American property reinsurance, said the consortium increases line size by more than a third, letting brokers place into additional A-rated Lloyd's capital in one transaction while MS Amlin keeps underwriting and claims authority.

Treat the 87.7% as a clean-quarter number, not a run-rate. A quarter without catastrophe claims says more about MS Amlin's appetite for North American risk than about its pricing.