Revenues, operating profit up in Q2 for Allianz

Allianz Group has reported a 6.3% increase in its revenues for the second quarter of the year over the same period of 2012, and an operating profit of 2.4 billion euros, up just over 5% from Q2 last year.

For the second quarter of 2013, the company reported revenues of 26.8 billion euros, compared with 25.2 billion euros in Q2 last year.

“Property and Casualty insurance produced stable revenues and strong profits despite several natural catastrophes,” the company reported, also noting that its life and health business segment and asset management business also remained strong during the quarter.

“We can look back on a very successful first half year overall,” said Michael Diekmann, CEO of Allianz SE. “Although we faced record floods in Central Europe, persistent low interest rates and erratic capital markets, our business continued to grow profitably.”

“In view of our good half-year results, we are maintaining our operating profit outlook for 2013 of 9.2 billion euros, plus or minus 500 million euros, although based on our current projections we see the figure more toward the upper end of this range,” he added.

“As always, this forecast is under the caveat that natural catastrophes and capital market turbulence do not exceed expected levels.”

Revenues in the Property and Casualty business rose to 10.8 billion euros for the second quarter of 2013, 0.3% up in a year-on-year comparison from 10.7 billion euros, the company also reported.

“Strong growth in markets such as Australia, Latin America and Turkey as well as at Allianz Worldwide Partners offset declines in revenues especially from the industrial insurer Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty and the reduction of crop insurance business in the U.S.,” it noted. “Excluding this crop business in the US, internal growth amounted to 2.3%.”

Operating profit rose 12.3% in the second quarter of 2013 to 1.2 billion euros from 1.1 billion euros in Q2 2012.

The combined ratio for the second quarter of 2013 improved to 96.0%, 1.2%age points down from 97.2% the year before.

For Allianz, after reinsurance, the net impact of the June floods in central Europe was approximately 330 million euros.

Together with floods in France and Canada and hailstorms in Germany and Switzerland, the total impact from natural catastrophes on the loss ratio was 5.3 percentage points.

However, the loss ratio ultimately improved to 67.3% from 69.4% for the previous year’s second quarter, it added.

“Our efforts in recent years are paying off. We were able to help our customers and maintain our profitability, even during the many natural catastrophes in the second quarter,” said Dieter Wemmer, Allianz SE’s chief financial officer.

“That includes the record June floods in Central Europe – here we expect benefits to our customers to exceed 700 million euros,” he added. “We have received flood claims from over 50,000 customers and have already settled more than 32,000 of them.”