IAG today announced its first half financial results for 2018 - with a substantial upswing in profits compared with this time last year.
Profits after tax were $648 million up from $475 million this time last year. Pre tax profits were 36.9% up on 2017 first half results.
Peter Harmer, IAG's CEO and managing director said: "This is an encouraging result for IAG. It reflects solid like-for-like gross written premium (GWP) growth of nearly 4%, primarily achieved through rate increases in commercial and consumer, along with some volume growth in motor. At a reported level, our comprehensive reinsurance protection in the half saw net natural peril claim costs below allowance while a higher favourable credit spread impact and larger than anticipated reserve releases also helped boost our reported margin.
"Operationally, our optimisation program continues to track to plan and we have announced a strategic review of the options for our Asian businesses which we expect to be complete by the end of the calendar year.
We started to see a favourable impact over the half of a number of initiatives we have put in place. This included programs of work around combating claims inflation through our car hire initiatives and customer choice campaign, accelerating our
partnering with global experts to simplify processes and reduce complexity, and the bedding down of the Australia Division,
created in July last year."
You can download the pdf report here IAG 2018 1H results.