2019 marks the first full operational year as AIG UK, following the restructure of our business into two entities in the UK and Europe in December 2018. The financial results of the prior years for the UK business are embedded in the predecessor company AIG Europe Limited (AEL) and as such there are no prior year comparisons.
In 2019, AIG UK reported a strong performance in its first full year of trading with a pre-tax profit of £186.4 million. Profitability was driven by a positive underwriting result of £44.9 million, which itself benefitted from low catastrophic losses, positive premium rate change, and underwriting and business mix actions. Investment income further improved the profit before tax.
Net premiums written were £1,130.1 million. The net loss ratio was 67.0%. Net operating expenses were £364.0 million. With robust expense control and a more positive trend in losses, the combined operating ratio (COR) was 96.4% for the financial year.
The total equity of AIG UK at 30 November 2019 was £1,809.4 million. Following the approval of the Company’s Internal Model during the year, its Own Funds were 138.3% of its Solvency Capital Requirement.
| 2019 | |
| Net Premiums Written | £1,130.1m |
| Profit/(Loss) before tax | £186.4m |
| Net Loss Ratio | 67.0% |
| Combined Ratio COR | 96.4% |
| Underwriting Result | £44.9m |
Anthony Baldwin, Chief Executive of AIG UK, commented:
“During 2019 we made significant progress on the execution of our strategy to position AIG for sustainable profitable growth and delivered on our commitment to achieve a full year of underwriting profit. These results reflect critical foundational work to improve underwriting fundamentals, reposition our portfolio and aggressively decrease limits, while meaningfully reducing volatility through a comprehensive reinsurance strategy. We also instilled discipline and focus on expense management.
“Strong performance from our high growth lines as well as improvements in the underlying quality and profitability across all our lines of business demonstrated the significant work done to optimise our portfolio.”
In 2018, AIG restructured AEL and established two new legal entities – American International Group UK Limited (AIG UK) and AIG Europe SA (AESA) – in preparation for the UK’s exit from the European Union.
The two-entity structure enables AIG to continue to service all of its policyholders and business partners across the UK and Europe, and to guarantee contract certainty to all policyholders, regardless of the future relationship between the UK and the EU. Both companies started writing business, and policyholders transferred from AEL to the relevant new entity, on December 1, 2018.
The AIG UK 2019 annual report can be found here.
Scan here to download the app