AIG UK delivers 'strong performance' in first full year

American International Group UK (AIG UK), the unit created as part of the Brexit-related restructure, delivered a "strong performance" in its first full year of trading.

2019 marks the first full operational year as AIG UK was formed in December 2018 following the restructure of its business into two entities in the UK and Europe in preparation for the UK’s exit from the European Union.

AIG UK generated a pre-tax profit of £186.4 million, driven by a positive underwriting result of £44.9 million, which benefited from low catastrophic losses, positive premium rate change, and underwriting and business mix actions. Investment income further improved the profit before tax.

Net premiums written were £1.130 billion.

The combined operating ratio (COR) was 96.4 percent for the financial year. The total equity of AIG UK at 30 November 2019 was £1.809 billion.

Anthony Baldwin, chief executive of AIG UK, said: “During 2019 we made significant progress on the execution of our strategy to position AIG for sustainable profitable growth and delivered on our commitment to achieve a full year of underwriting profit. These results reflect critical foundational work to improve underwriting fundamentals, reposition our portfolio and aggressively decrease limits, while meaningfully reducing volatility through a comprehensive reinsurance strategy. We also instilled discipline and focus on expense management."

Baldwin added: “Strong performance from our high growth lines as well as improvements in the underlying quality and profitability across all our lines of business demonstrated the significant work done to optimise our portfolio.”