R&Q sees first half 2017 profit soar
Randall & Quilter (R&Q) has announced that it made a first half 2017 post-tax profit of £5.9 million, up substantially on the £0.9 million it made over the first six months of 2016.
“I am pleased to report that the group delivered a very strong performance during the first half of the year,” said Ken Randall, chairman and CEO. “It is the Board’s view, especially given the advanced state of a number of other legacy transactions and the growing pipeline that the results for the full year will be at least in line with expectations, absent unforeseen circumstances.
According to Randall, the outlook for the group beyond the current year remains “very promising.” Randall said that R&Q has continued to simplify the business and announced the disposals of its Lloyd’s Managing Agency business, subject to regulatory approval, as well as its insurance manager, Triton in Norway.
“We have established and developed high quality and fully licensed platforms in multiple regulatory jurisdictions while retaining our entrepreneurial and innovative culture,” Randall continued. “We have widened our distribution network of brokers with the recent fundraising increasing the attractiveness of R&Q Insurance Malta and Accredited.
“Our planned focus on legacy acquisitions and the use of Accredited and R&Q Insurance Malta as conduits for niche programme business to highly rated reinsurers looks increasingly well placed. There are good growth opportunities in both of these core operations and the group’s strong and growing market position is being driven by our central tenets of expertise and innovation.”
R&Q also stated that it had seen positive movements in the group’s existing run-off portfolios with net reserve releases of £5.0m, down a little on the comparable 2016 figure of £6.2m, aided by commutation activity in the US and favourable development in certain captive accounts.
The group also reported an investment return of 1.4 percent on the Group’s ‘free’ assets, down slightly on the first half 2016 figure of 2.1 percent, due to favourable credit markets and rising yields on a predominantly US dollar based portfolio.
