PB Week: Investment returns hit insurers' profits

Insurers have been benefiting from a growing economy where things could seemingly only go up, now many of them are being hit hard by their investment portfolios no matter how diverse, writes Andrew Tjaardstra, editor of Professional Broking magazine, the management magazine for insurance brokers.

Poor results

Brit’s finance director Matthew Scales has said on Wednesday that his firm’s investment portfolio had outperformed the FTSE share indexes and that the insurer had managed to sell its mortgage backed securities at a profit. However, this could not hide a deeply disappointing set of numbers which showed investment income drop dramatically from £81.5m to £2.1m. Brit UK’s net reserve release was £18.2m up from £16.9m this time last year with operating profit increasing in the UK from £8