ERS, the specialist motor insurer, has announced a record profit of £13.9m since it was bought by Aquiline in 2013.
The result was supported by a 13% year-on-year increase in vehicles on cover and GWP of £360m (£330m in 2018). The result demonstrates ERS’ ability to underwrite specialist motor insurance through insurance brokers, who continue to choose ERS as their preferred market.
Whilst ERS’ top-line has grown, this has been achieved alongside a profit-first strategy. The Combined Operating Ratio (COR%) which ended the year at 99.7% (96.1% in 2018) reflects the June 2019 change in the Ogden discount rate to -0.25%.
The company continues to make significant technology investments to build on its legacy free IT applications
- Insurer Hosted Pricing has been rolled out across more products, helping get prices to market faster and providing more risk data than ever
- Data Enrichment enhancements provide underwriters more confidence to pick the right risks at the right price
- Over half of ERS’ Commercial new business is now traded online through eTrade
ERS CEO Ian Parker commented “2019 was a difficult year for the industry with exceptional claims inflations and Ogden impacting results for the fourth year in a row. Whilst Ogden was out of our control, we continued to refine our book and focus on the things we can control. We invested in electronic platforms where price and speed of service are key to successful trading and made huge leaps forward in our data and analytics capability, by building a new data science team to help us underwrite the right risks at the right price.
Through 2020, we’ll continue to focus on our COR%. We have strong underlying performance and in investments we’ve made in infrastructure and technology, we have the foundation in place to achieve our goals and continue to build a track-record of results. We fully expect to continue to drive stable, profitable premium growth”.
