Khalifa Abdulla Turki Al Subaey (left), Chairman and Managing Director of QIC Group and Salem Khalaf Al Mannai, Group Chief Executive Officer at QIC.
Doha: Qatar Insurance Company (QIC), the leading insurer in Qatar and the Middle East North Africa (Mena) region, yesterday announced a net profit of QR571m from continuing operations for the first nine months of 2022. The Group’s gross written premiums amounted to QR7.8bn, as QIC’s domestic and Mena operations continued to expand its gross written premiums by 14 percent to QR2.3bn.
Khalifa Abdulla Turki Al Subaey, Chairman and Managing Director of QIC Group said: “QIC Group continued to deliver healthy results despite strong headwinds from soaring inflation, geo-political uncertainties, high natural catastrophe losses and financial market volatility. In this exceptional environment, our Group further strengthened its leadership position in our home markets. We reduced our exposure to volatile severity risks and laid the foundations to further trim our portfolio and to divest those businesses that no longer fit our lean, yet well-diversified business strategy”.
In the first nine months of 2022 a yet unseen combination of major headwinds challenged the insurance industry. Geopolitical tensions, in particular the Russian war on Ukraine, and the outflow from the COVID-19 pandemic continue to drive supply-chain disruptions and energy prices. While the Middle East is expected to experience strong GDP growth in 2022, the mature markets in Europe may well slide into a recession. Inflation is predicted to reach almost 9 percent on a global scale, while monetary policies tightened substantially with the US Fed rising its federal funds rate to 3.25 percent from 0.5 percent within just six months, pushing borrowing costs to its highest since 2008.
While rising capital cost will eventually result into higher insurance rates and better returns on fixed income, in the short-term insurers have to fight exceptional capital market volatility and a decline in fixed-income market values. In addition, inflation will drive the claims ratio for legacy and long-tail risks – a threat that the Group will observe closely. Besides these challenge, insurers still had to battle with mounting natural catastrophe losses estimated at close to $100bn for the first nine months of 2022.
Despite these fierce headwinds, in the first nine month of 2022, QIC Group turned in gross written premiums of QR7.8bn.
Salem Khalaf Al Mannai, Group Chief Executive Officer at QIC said: “QIC’s domestic insurance business in Qatar and Mena recorded another strong performance in the first nine months of 2022, turning in a solid underwriting profit. Gross written premiums in the region grew by 14 percent to QR2.3bn, compared to QR2bn in the first nine months of 2021. Volume growth was mainly driven by strong demand for QIC’s market-leading online and digital product offerings and services”.
He added: “The Group’s international operations, QIC Global which had recently announced its intention to align its core companies under the Antares brand name, generated QR5.5bn in premium volume, representing approximately 70 percent of the Group’s total gross written premiums”.
QIC Group generated an underwriting income of QR272m in the first nine months of 2022 from its continuing opreations, underlining the Group’s robust performance based on strong results from its domestic business. The Group’s combined ratio for its continuing operations improved to 99.3 percent in the first nine months of 2022, compared to 99.8 percent for the same period of 2021.
In the first three quarters of 2022, QIC Group’s net investment income amounted to QR671m. With an annualised investment return of 4.4 percent, the Group has once again demonstrated its outstanding expertise in asset management despite high market volatility.
The Group’s continuous efforts in process efficiency and automation yielded results as QIC Group further improved its already exceptional operational efficiency with a healthy administrative expense ratio for its core business.
In line with the Group’s strategy to exit from low margin and loss making international direct business, QIC has decided to divest the Gibraltar-based direct insurance carriers. QIC has received an offer for purchase from a reputable institutional buyer which is under negotiation.The proposed divestment plan is subject to approval by all relevant authorities.
QIC has committed to support Qatar’s ambition to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2030. QIC has established a long-term Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategy and framework, which has been approved by its Board, to support Qatar’s ESG commitments and aims to incorporate ESG guidelines into its underwriting and asset management philosophy. In addition, an ESG and Sustainability Committee has been established to ensure that group-wide efforts are focused and channelled to achieve the set goals.
As part of its strategy to expand its presence in the profitable direct insurance market within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), QIC is exploring the possibility of a merger with Vision Insurance through its subsidiary Oman Qatar Insurance. QIC supports a potential merger between the two entities, subject to the approval of the respective boards of directors, shareholders and stakeholders, satisfactory due diligence and necessary regulatory approvals and the signing of legally binding agreements.
QIC is named “Best Online Insurance Company in the Middle East” at the Global Banking & Finance Review Awards 2022. This recognises QIC’s exceptional performance in 2022 in terms of digitalisation of products and services. In addition, the company has achieved a record number of customers using online channels to meet their insurance needs. QIC also won the Domestic General Insurer of The Year and Auto Insurance Initiative of The Year awards in Qatar at the Insurance Asia Awards 2022.
More recently, QIC and QInvest have announced the establishment of Epicure Islamic Investment Management, a Sharia’a compliant entity, authorised and regulated by Qatar Financial Centre Regulatory Authority (QFCRA). The new company will focus on a wide range of Islamic asset management activities, ranging from investments to the development and structuring of innovative Islamic investment products.
The wholly-owned global InsurTech company Anoud Technologies announced the successful launch and integration of the ACORD Data Exchange Platform and Translator (ADEPT), which enables real-time data exchange, translation and transformation, connecting stakeholders across the insurance industry.
Antares Managing Agency (Antares), the Lloyd’s specialist insurance and reinsurance subsidiary of QIC Group, announced that Antares Syndicate 1274 ranked first for investment performance based on three-year average investment returns from FY 2019 to 2021, according to J.P. Morgan Asset Management’s Lloyd’s Peer Analysis.
QIC Group has also levereged its strong regional and international influence and held the InsurTech MENA Sumit 2022, a first of its kind hybrid event in the region. Through such initiatives QIC Group proves its commitment to reshaping the digital insurance landscape by building new digital ventures and strategically investing in high potential early-stage startups.
“InsurTech MENA Summit 2022, provided insurance companies, tech players and government entities both, regionally and globally, a platform and an opportunity to expand their digital business into new markets.
QIC Group’s focus will remain in enhancing shareholder value by accomplishing a profitable, successful and socially and environmentally responsible global organisation, with its heart in Qatar,” Al Mannai concluded.
