UNIQA swings to pre-tax profit in Bulgaria in 2022

Net earned premiums increased to 44.3 million euro in 2022 from 40.1 million euro in 2021, UNIQA said in an annual financial report.

At the same time, net investment income more than halved to 0.6 million euro from 1.7 million euro.

UNIQA's total gross written premiums (GWP) in Bulgaria amounted to 71.9 million euro in 2022, which represented an annual rise of 13%. This was well above the overall 3.9% increase to some 6.6 million euro for the insurance group as a whole.

In Bulgaria, UNIQA performed the strongest in health insurance, growing its total GWP by 47% year-on-year to 17 million euro. GWP in non-life insurance went up 16% compared to 2021, reaching 39.9 million euro while life insurance gross premiums dropped 16% to 15 million euro.

The Austrian group also said that while its operations in Ukraine were still ongoing, it had largely discontinued new business in Russia and it was yet to make a decision on its Russian life insurance joint venture with Raiffeisen Bank International.

In Southeast Europe, UNIQA also operates in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Croatia. In the region - excluding Romania - the group saw its total pre-tax profit decline to 14.4 million euro in 2022 from 15.6 million euro the year before, the financial statement showed.

The UNIQA group is active in Bulgaria through two companies - UNIQA Insurance and UNIQA Life Insurance. The group has a share of 4.2% of the Bulgarian insurance market with a headcount of 289, according to information published on its website.

($ = 0.9431 euro)