Our latest UK Underwriting Ratings has named FM Insurance – the UK arm of FM Global – as the best insurer in UKGI with a score of 92% for 2023, up from 69% a year earlier.
The insurer’s upturn in performance was aided by an improving combined operating ratio (COR) that helped drive up the insurer’s overall performance rating by some 23 percentage points – the second highest of all UK-regulated insurers.
FM Insurance is joined on this year’s list of Gold Award winners by SCOR UK with a score of 87%, Arch (UK) (83%), Starr International (Europe) (83%), Berkshire Hathaway International (79%), International General Insurance Company (UK) (75%) and Fidelis Underwriting (74%).
Based on our proprietary formula, the research rates every UK-regulated insurer across three key metrics to assess underwriting performance – COR, aggregate COR over the last three years, and the improvement in the COR for the most recent year.
The research found that overall underwriting performance has declined over the last 12 months, with the aggregate score for UK insurers falling to 64%, down from 65% in each of the previous two years.
This drop-off in performance was driven by a deterioration in the aggregate COR, which rose 1.8 percentage points as it fell into loss-making territory with a 100.1% COR, up from 98.3% a year earlier.
All of this occurs in a market where insurers continue to struggle with rising claims inflation that has seen net claims incurred across the market jump by more than 12% over the last year.
This led to UK insurers receiving an aggregate COR Rating of 66% for 2023, and while this is in line with previous years, the COR Improvement Rating fell by four percentage points to 55%, down from 59% a year earlier.
The Three-year Aggregate COR Rating, however, has remained steady, with UK insurers receiving a score of 68% for 2023, in line with the previous year and one percentage point down on 2021’s 69% rating.
Underwriting Ratings for every insurer are available through the Insurance DataLab market intelligence platform, with scores broken down by business line to reveal which insurers are delivering a best-in-class performance across the entirety of UKGI.
Register for a free trial of the platform here, and find out how Insurance DataLab can help your business better understand the market.
