22nd Jul 2016 06:33
LONDON (Alliance News) - Beazley PLC on Friday reported a fall in profit in the first half of 2016, but revenue rose on the back of growth in gross written premiums, and it said it doesn't expect to see much disruption from the UK's decision to leave the EU.
The insurance company said pretax profit in the first half of 2016 slipped to USD150.2 million from USD154.5 million the year before, although revenue rose to USD939.9 million from USD915.4 million, and gross premiums written grew to USD1.12 billion from USD1.10 billion.
Its net asset value per share also rise to 199.3 pence from 167.8p the year before.
Beazley said its business in the US continued to grow strongly in the first half of the year, but this was partially offset by continued premium rate declines for much of the large risk business underwritten in London.
36 new underwriters joined in the period, covering sectors including healthcare, environmental, marine and fine art.
It also returned its headquarters to the UK in April, after being based in Ireland for nearly seven years.
Beazley will pay its first interim dividend of 3.5p, up from 3.3p the year before.
"The UK referendum vote to leave the European Union in June will undoubtedly complicate planning for many businesses based in the City of London. For Beazley we do not expect the impact to be greatly disruptive, although the long term macroeconomic repercussions of the vote are hard to predict," Beazley said in a statement.
"The US is our largest market by a wide margin and approximately 80% of our business in 2015 was transacted in US dollars. Our underwriting capital and overall asset allocation broadly reflects this currency split so the recent weakening of sterling has not affected our capacity to underwrite," the company added.
By Karolina Kaminska; [email protected] @KarolinaAllNews
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