BERLIN (Reuters) – Zurich’s operating profit for the first half of the year rose 25%, which was better than expected, to $3.39 billion. Both its property and casualty and life businesses did better than expected.
A company-made consensus forecast shows that analysts had expected the operating profit of a business to be $3.28 billion on average.
Insurers are losing money on their investments because of the war in Ukraine, and their customers are losing money because of inflation.
Commercial insurance, on the other hand, has benefited from rising premiums.
Zurich’s property and casualty business had a record-high first-half combined ratio of 91.9%, which is a measure of how profitable the business is. This was due to higher prices and fewer claims from natural disasters and bad weather.
Last week, rival Allianz (ETR:ALVG) didn’t make as much money as expected, but AXA did better than expected thanks to sales of health insurance.
Zurich, which is the fifth largest insurance company in Europe, said it was on track to beat all of its goals.
The group also said on Thursday that it would buy back shares worth $1.91 billion (1.8 billion Swiss francs) starting in the next few months to make up for the expected drop in earnings from the sale of the German life insurance back book.
$1 is worth 0.9445 Swiss francs.
