New Telegraph

Cornerstone Insurance posts 22% growth in profit

Cornerstone Insurance Plc has recorded a 22 per cent growth in profit before tax for the 2019 financial year.

 

The figure was disclosed last week during the company’s 28th Annual General Meeting in Lagos. Addressing the shareholders, the Chairman of the underwriting firm, Segun Adebanji, said the company ended the year with a profit before tax of N4.01 billion, representing an increase of 22 per cent over the previous year.

 

He said the firm’s net claims ratio for the year stood at 47 per cent and has been relatively stable since the company put in place stricter risk acceptance parameters, as competitive pressures have driven premium rates to uneconomic levels.

 

According to him, “worthy of note is the improvement of our marginal surplus from N102 million in 2018 to N4.9 billion in the year under review. This takes our solvency margin to 198 per cent, almost double the regulatory benchmark. Cash and cash equivalents balances also rose from N4.22 billion to N12.64 billion, thus greatly improving our liquidity.”

 

In the same vein, the Gross Premium Written (GPW) of Cornerstone Insurance and its subsidiaries during the period under review was N13.05 billion, representing an increase of 13 per cent over the previous year.

 

He also pointed out that premiums from life insurance accounted for 32.5 per cent of the gross premium written, representing an increase of 25 per cent in the previous year. According to him, the largest contributors to general business gross premium written were bonds, engineering and accident N2.12 billion; oil & gasN2.04 billion and motor N1.36 billion.

 

He said the company’s continued growth in special risk lines especially in the power, aviation, and oil and gas sectors was a testament to the confidence its customers and partners have in the firm’s technical underwriting expertise which it continued to strengthen.

 

“Our investment portfolios yielded positive performance figures driven mainly by trading activities on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), fixed income securities and the profit from continuing operations of of a joint venture arising mainly from the gains on disposal of investment property, overall, investment activities contributed a total of N4.8 billion to the group performance,” he stated.

 

He maintained that the board of directors of the firm recommended the transfer of N1.72 billion from the company’s share premium account to the share capital account by issuing bonus shares in the proportion of seven new share of fifty kobo each for every 30 existing share of fifty kobo each, to achieve the company’s recapitalisation plan, a request which was granted by the shareholders.

Read Previous

Standard Chartered partners Visa on e-Commerce payments

Read Next

Pandemic: S’African regulator working to clarify claims rights

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *