Viewpoint: A tale of contrasting fortunes

Andrew Tjaardstra editor PB

RBS Insurance has been one of the great profitable success stories in insurance ever since it controversially promised to cut out the middlemen. Yet 2009 was a year of turmoil for the insurer, seeing its profits plummet over £500m and closing its premium finance arm, Finsure.

Since it began reporting quarterly results three years ago, it recorded its first quarterly loss in the fourth quarter of 2009 as personal injury claims soared by £448m, something not helped by one of the coldest winters since the 1960s. The firm's combined operating ratio climbed from 93.6% to 105.9% and net claims rose 20%: the scale that once made it so attractive and expensively priced has now come to undermine it and it is hard to see there being no redundancies as a result.

Meanwhile, RBSI

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