Zurich profit up after fewer severe catastrophes in 2013

Zurich Insurance reported a rise in its net income for 2013, to $4.03 billion from $3.89 billion in 2012. On Thursday, the company also reported reported a business operating profit of $4.7 billion for the year.

For the fourth quarter of 2013, business operating profit was up to $1.1 billion, from $573 million in the same quarter of 2012. Net income was also up to $1.07 billion from $988 million in Q4 2012.

Fewer severe catastrophes helped improve the General Insurance segment’s combined ratio, which was 95.5% in 2013, compared with 98.4% in 2012.

“We delivered a solid operating profit in all core businesses, with good growth in priority General Insurance and Global Life markets, and Farmers focusing on implementing its new consumer strategy, while at the same time delivering resilient margins,” Martin Senn, Zurich’s CEO commented in a press release.

“As we said at Investor Day in December 2013, much of our business performs very well and we are taking action to address areas where we need to improve,” he said.

“We have moved quickly to take the first steps in executing this strategy. In our General Insurance business, we combined regional management of the Middle East & Africa with Europe allowing us better economies of scale in running the business,” he also noted.

“We will continue to build on the success of our combined General Insurance and Global Life offering to large corporate customers, leverage the strengths of our North America Commercial business to better serve commercial mid-market customers around the world and focus our retail business to markets where we can excel.”