The Hanover 2018 results give Roche confidence outlook

John Roche, president and CEO at The Hanover Insurance Group, expects to “build on the positive momentum” the firm achieved in 2018, which saw major changes such as  the sale of its speciality insurer Chaucer to China Re.

The company’s annual results showed its net income rose to $391 million in 2018 compared with $186.2 million the year before, while its net premiums written grew by 6.7 percent last year to $4.3 billion up from $4.1 billion in 2017.

Continuing the positive trend, its combined ratio for 2018 was 96.1 percent a slight improvement on the year before when it was 97.3 percent.

Roche said 2018 had been a successful year “marked by important strategic and operating accomplishments that position us to deliver even greater value over time”.

He said: "The sale of Chaucer enables us to focus exclusively on our distinctive domestic business and provides additional financial flexibility. In 2018, we enhanced our product offering, our agency penetration and technological capabilities, while simultaneously improving our expense ratio.”

He said the company had generated a strong pre-tax operating income, which grew 8 percent excluding catastrophes and that Hanover delivered an annual adjusted operating return on equity of 12.6 percent “despite elevated catastrophes, property losses and increased severity in our auto lines, demonstrating the resiliency of our diversified, high quality book of business”.

“We increased net premiums written by 6.7% for the year, emphasizing our high profit margin segments, including personal lines, small commercial and our most profitable speciality businesses. We have every confidence in our ability to build on the positive momentum we have established across our company."

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