Frankfurt (Reuters) – Germany’s second-largest insurer, R+V, has reached its revenue target a year earlier than planned and has coped well with billions in damage from natural catastrophes.
The income from premiums increased last year by 1.2 percent to 20.1 billion euros, the cooperative insurance group announced on Thursday in Wiesbaden. R+V had actually only aimed for the 20 billion mark for its anniversary year 2022. Premiums increased sharply, particularly in health insurance. In life insurance, new business shrank by 1.9 percent because R+V throttled business with single premiums. The volume of new contracts against regular premiums, on the other hand, shot up by 22 percent.
CEO Norbert Rollinger estimated the burden from natural disasters in an interview with the “Brsen-Zeitung” at almost 1.1 billion euros. Above all, the flooding on the Ahr and Erft in the west of the state drove the loss balance upwards. “It was the most damaging year in our 100-year history,” he told the newspaper. However, the burden of claims was mitigated by hedging via reinsurance structures. R+V had “received a fairly decent net result”. The profit according to the international IFRS standard was even slightly better than expected due to the good development on the stock exchanges. R+V plans to announce concrete results on April 5th.