Conduit Holdings Limited, the parent company of Conduit Re, has announced its preliminary results for the period ended December 31.
During the period, the company launched a successful IPO with net proceeds of $1,057 million. It posted a loss after tax of $4.6 million, and a basic and diluted loss per share of $0.03. Book value per share was $6.37, and the company posted a negative return on equity of 0.4%. The company commenced underwriting on January 01.
“Conduit Re has got off to a flying start,” said Neil Eckert, executive chairman of Conduit Holdings. “We have launched the business in attractive and improving market conditions. We have already established a top-class management and underwriting team. We are embracing the benefits that technology brings for the new generation of reinsurance underwriters and we have established strong relationships with our key trading partners around the market. It is an exciting time to be building a new reinsurance business, and we couldn’t have asked for a better beginning to the establishment of Conduit as a new breed of reinsurer.”
Eckert also said that the company has appointed Sir Nicholas Soames to chair the newly established Conduit Foundation, which will engage in social and environmental projects.
“Following on from our strong start in the 01 January 2021 renewals, we continue to build out our underwriting portfolio according to plan,” said Trevor Carvey, chief executive and chief underwriting officer. “We have seen wide acceptance by brokers and clients alike as an attractive and value-adding business partner, and we are well-positioned to deliver on our stated strategy of building a balanced and diversified portfolio.”
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Carvey said that Conduit was the beneficiary of “attractive and improving market conditions” in the business classes the company targets, allowing it to remain “highly selective” in how it deploys its capital.
“The underlying pressures driving improvements in both rates and terms are coming from the primary markets and permeating at an increasing rate into the reinsurance markets,” Carvey said. “We believe this will lead to a more sustained improvement taking into account the many factors that led to deteriorations in industry loss ratios in recent years. Consequently, we have been more focused initially on taking a pro-rata share of primary insurance via the underwriting of quota share reinsurance treaties rather than on excess of loss in our early trading. However, we still expect to deliver a balanced portfolio across all classes and territories, and we look forward to the upcoming April and mid-year renewals with optimism.”
