<\/p>\n
Hiscox is committed to a planned insurance consortium providing cover for ships travelling through a safe passage from Ukraine, its chief executive said on Wednesday, as the Lloyd’s of London insurer shares plunged on a first-half loss.<\/p>\n
The first grain-carrying ship to leave Ukrainian ports in wartime, following a deal brokered by Ankara and the United Nations, safely anchored off Turkey’s coast on Tuesday and is due to be inspected on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Trade body the Lloyd’s Market Association last month said a consortium could be formed to provide cover for grain shipments.<\/p>\n
The consortium had not yet been finalized, Aki Hussain told Reuters by phone.<\/p>\n
“We have committed our support to the Lloyd’s market-led initiative,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We are very supportive of it.”<\/p>\n
Lloyd’s insurer Ascot and broker Marsh have already launched a separate facility to provide up to $50 million in cover for grain shipments from Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Hiscox, one of the biggest players in the Lloyd’s commercial insurance market, had insured some ships which are stuck in Ukrainian ports but has received no claims so far, Hussain said.<\/p>\n
Hiscox said its losses from Ukraine and Russia were $48 million net of reinsurance, a slight increase from a $40 million estimate made in May.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The insurer’s shares plunged 7.6%, making it the worst performer in the FTSE mid-cap index, after it reported a pretax loss of $107 million in the first half due to a steep decline in the value of its investment portfolio.<\/p>\n
Hiscox posted a profit of $133 million in the first half of 2021.<\/p>\n
Hiscox recorded an investment loss of $214 million, compared with a profit of $62 million a year earlier, it said in a trading statement.<\/p>\n
However, the insurer’s underwriting performance was strong. It reported a combined ratio – a key measure of underwriting profitability – of 91.3% compared with 93.1% a year earlier. A level below 100% indicates a profit.<\/p>\n
Hiscox had raised premiums by around 8% in the London commercial insurance market, 13% in reinsurance and 6% to 7% in its retail business, Hussain said.<\/p>\n
KBW analysts described the results as a “mixed bag”, but reiterated their “market perform” rating on the stock.<\/p>\n
(Reuters – Reporting by Carolyn Cohn; editing by Jason Neely, Louise Heavens and Tomasz Janowski)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n maritime professional<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hiscox is committed to a planned insurance consortium providing cover for ships travelling through a safe passage from Ukraine, its chief executive said on Wednesday, as the Lloyd’s of London insurer shares plunged on a first-half loss. The first grain-carrying ship to leave Ukrainian ports in wartime, following a deal brokered by Ankara and the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31005,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maritime-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/31005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}