Zurich Insurance's top line strengthened across all three businesses in the first nine months of 2024 while its combined ratio edged up on natural catastrophe losses, as detailed 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. Like-for-like insurance revenue from short-term contracts and fee revenue from investment contracts in the life business expanded 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's combined ratio increased to 3.4% from 3.1% on natural catastrophe losses.
After clocking an estimated pre-tax loss for Hurricane Helene of $160 million in the third quarter, Zurich Insurance pegs preliminary pre-tax 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 lost marginally in late morning trade..