McGavick claims good times ahead for XL Group
Mike McGavick, CEO of XL Group, has claimed that the company is well-placed to have a good 2017, despite admitting that 2016 had not been a great year.
“Our excitement about 2017 does not change management’s and my frustration over our 2016 results,” McGavick said in a letter to shareholders. “It was a disappointing performance for our shareholders. We underperformed. Plain and simple. We are driven to rectify this result.”
However, according to McGavick XL Group is already well placed to do better in 2017, benefitting from disciplined underwriting and an “unwavering” dedication to client service. He added: “Like the fluttering tell-tales on a ship’s sails at sea, these two fundamentals are the sure signs of the stronger market positioning the creation of XL Catlin has given us; they foreshadow the ability to out-perform, even in these difficult conditions.”
In addition McGavick said that the company had made substantial progress in lowering its operating expenses, achieving the lowest P&C operating expense ratio in the last eight years. He also said that XL Group will focus more attention on innovation and on keeping up with clients demand for this.
McGavick concluded that: “Since 2010, XL’s strategy has been to relentlessly create an operating environment and culture attractive to the best talent in our industry combined with an understanding of how technology enables our people to have superior insight, a lower cost base of operations, and the ability to innovate solutions and business models to keep up with the rapidly evolving risks of our clients.
“This is the strategy that led to the turnaround of our results from 2011 to 2014, and that guided our 2015 acquisition and now substantially completed integration with Catlin. And it is this talent + technology strategy that is driving efforts from continuous improvement to innovation to increasing diversity and inclusion.
“Thus, in XL Catlin, we have created a global leader in complex and specialty insurance risk underwriting and reinsurance. It is a vastly more efficient company, with both the innovation leadership our clients expect and the ability to imagine new business models necessary to the future in our sector.”
