It looks like ERS major shareholder Aquiline Capital Partners, which snapped up the specialist motor insurer in 2013, made the right move not to offload the Lloyd’s underwriting business two years ago.
Read more: Aquiline drops plan to sell ERS
This morning (February 26), ERS announced its highest profit under the company’s current owner. In fact it’s been a steady climb for the motor insurer since its major turnaround in 2018.
From the £12.2 million loss suffered by ERS in 2017, here’s how the business performed in the past three years:
|
Year |
Profit |
|
2018 |
£11.1 million |
|
2019 |
£13.9 million |
|
2020 |
£32.8 million |
Combined operating ratio for 2020 stood at 91.9%, an improvement from 2019’s 99.7%. ERS attributed its latest figures to a year of underwriting discipline, the realisation of technology investments, and a reduction in claims frequency due to driving behaviour changes brought about by the coronavirus crisis.
“While it would be easy to point to a reduction in claims frequency throughout 2020 as a key input to the result, the digitalisation of commercial products has been fundamental,” said chief executive Peter Bilsby.
“By creating a full lifecycle online broker trading platform, we have been able to cope with changes in the market and can scale better than ever before – the pandemic alone saw demand for our commercial products increase by over 60%, all of which was traded online.”
Bilsby added that technology investments will be a key pillar of ERS’s proposition through 2021.
The CEO went on to state: “We are beginning to build a solid track record of results, and I have every confidence we will continue to grow through disciplined underwriting and expert judgement aligned to our strategy.
“The positive performance of the motor business is critical as it provides us with stability as we enter an exceptionally exciting and pivotal period, expanding our capabilities into new commercial and specialty lines.”
