Zurich Insurance Group's ($ZURN) top line strengthened across all three businesses in the first nine months of 2024 in a trading update on Thursday. Gross written premiums across the Swiss group's property and casualty division jumped to $36.13 billion in the nine months ended Sept. 30 from $34.59 billion a year ago.
The 4% like-for-like increase was attributed to increasing rates in commercial insurance and retail. Consequently, property and casualty insurance revenue climbed to $33.26 billion from $31.42 billion. As the P&C business remained robust, the life and farmers businesses also maintained their upside momentum, said the company. Insurance revenue from short-term contracts and fee revenue from investment contacts in the life business expanded on a like-for-like basis by 12% and 10% to $2.1 billion and $517 million, respectively.
New business premiums gained 6% to $12.61 billion on the back of unit-linked and particularly strong protection sales in Japan, the UK, and Latin America. Across the farmers management services division, underlying fee income grew 6% on a reported basis to $2.9 billion thanks to growth at the farmers exchanges and the brokerage entities Zurich Insurance acquired from the exchanges in December 2023. At the same time, the multi-line insurer saw natural catastrophe losses with a combined ratio impact of 3.4%, up from 3.1% a year earlier.
After clocking an estimated pretax loss for Hurricane Helene of $160 million in the third quarter, Zurich Insurance pegs preliminary pretax losses attributable to Hurricane Milton under $200 million for the final three months of 2024. "We are on track to exceed all current targets and look forward to presenting the new plan for the next 3 years at our Investor Day on November 21," said Group Chief Financial Officer Claudia Cordioli. The stock gained 1% in mid-afternoon trade..