Earnings

The decrease was also driven by non-renewals of some marine business in Q1 as well as declines in some specialty lines including liability, and accident and health.

The company also reported top-line growth of 25.8%, with gross premiums written during the quarter totaling $4.8bn.

Pricing in NA commercial P&C increased 11.2%, including changes in rate and exposure of 6.4% and 4.5% respectively, while loss cost trends rose 6.7%.

D&O (Inside P&C Daily lead story): There is hope that public D&O rates could stabilize in the second half of the year following a tough end to 2022 and an ongoing slump in Q1. Significant discounts granted in 2022 are unlikely to be repeated, and there are ongoing concerns around both economic and social inflation, sources said. In the meantime, rates remain pressured from ample capacity and muted demand as established providers and incumbents drawn to the hard market of past years compete for relatively stagnant demand. The collapse of SVB, while a shock, wasn’t the inflection point for D&O that some might have expected.

Pre-tax and after-tax catastrophe losses were $458mn and $382mn, respectively, compared to $333mn and $290mn in the prior year period.

“In a business that’s $2bn+ of revenue, the impact of Florida today vs 15 years ago is much different,” president and CEO J Powell Brown said on a conference call.

Inside P&C’s morning summary of the key stories to get you up to speed fast.

Competitor Marsh McLennan also reported a reacceleration of organic growth in the first quarter to 9%, coming above the 7% reported in Q4 2022.

The cat losses are expected to add 15 points to Horace Mann’s Q1 combined ratio, compared to a pre-tax loss of $7.3mn or 4.8 points in Q1 2022.

The specialty insurer booked $47.9mn of cat losses – or 1.9 points on its CoR – in Q1 and one point of unfavorable reserve development mostly related to property cat losses.

Management was speaking after RLI reported a Q1 combined ratio of 77.9% for Q1 2023, unchanged compared to the prior-year quarter, as top line growth accelerated sequentially to 15.6%.

The broker expects the restructure to result in savings of $300mn by 2024.