Aspen Insurance Report Six Month Results
Aspen Insurance Holdings Limited reported results for the six months ended June 30, 2022.
Mark Cloutier, Group Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, commented: “This is a strong set of results for Aspen with the business reporting both double digit top line growth and very healthy underwriting performance. Our year over year trends continue to show the impact of the work we have done to reshape our business and improve performance, resulting in a 6.5 percentage points improvement in our combined operating ratio to 88.2% from 94.7%. Operating income increased to $130.0 million from $66.7 million for the same period last year, representing an annualized operating return on average equity of 13.8%.
“We entered the year with a well-positioned and diversified portfolio that enabled us to capitalize on positive trading conditions to grow GWP by 16.5% to $2,351.3 million. This growth came from across both the insurance and reinsurance segments and through a combination of rate increases and new business, with an average rate change across our entire portfolio of 10.9%.
“Aspen Capital Partners, our capital markets franchise, is the third important pillar of our business, and we were pleased to report total fee income of $47.0 million for the six months ended June 30, 2022, an increase of $16.5 million over the prior year. Our capital markets franchise has continued to grow and now represents approximately $1 billion of AUM. Our ability to grow and diversify the capital we manage, notwithstanding a challenging environment, supports our core proposition that capital markets investors are key partners in Aspen’s future growth and innovation efforts.
“The Russia Ukraine conflict continues to inflict tragic, humanitarian consequences and costs. We at Aspen are doing our part to support humanitarian relief efforts during the first half of this year and on an ongoing basis. Aspen does not write primary aviation risks and, our specialty insurance exposure to the events is not significant. Although we do have specialty reinsurance exposure, we have had minimal loss notifications to date and have made provision in our first half results based upon analysis of those exposures. We continue to closely monitor the potential impact to our business.
“Similar to the wider market, Aspen has seen the impact of rising interest rates result in unrealized losses in our investment portfolio. We would expect the unrealized losses to unwind as securities reach maturity, while also seeing the benefit of higher interest rates starting to impact investment income.
“The trends we see in many of the key ratios and performance indicators we track give us confidence that Aspen is in a strong position to continue to benefit from attractive trading conditions we see across our markets, while at the same time continue to manage down volatility.”
