March 15 (SeeNews) - Austria's Vienna Insurance Group (VIG) said on Wednesday its preliminary pre-tax profit from operations in Bulgaria declined to 38.5 million euro ($41.34 million) in 2022 from 39.3 million euro a year earlier.
VIG Bulgaria's net combined ratio, a measure of profitability expressed by the ratio of total costs divided by total revenue, rose by 5.9 percentage points to 82.9%, the company said in an annual financial statement.
Gross written premiums (GWP) went up to 251.5 million euro last year from 213.3 million euro in 2021. Life regular GWP posted a 35.4% increase to 42.5 million euro and life single grew by 20.6% to 11.8 million euro.
Health GWP jumped by an annual 34.8% to 22.7 million euro in the review period, while casco GWP added 20.1% to 80.8 million euro and other property rose 11.8% to 57.6 million euro. The only segment to register a decline was motor third-party liability, which edged down by 1% to 36 million euro.
VIG's net earned premiums in its extended CEE segment, which includes Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Moldova, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia, as well as Ukraine, grew by 25% year-on-year to 2.74 billion euro last year. Net profit in the whole segment dropped by 49% to 80.4 million euro, mainly due to goodwill impairments in Albania, Kosovo and North Macedonia and impairments of other intangible assets in Dutch insurer Aegon's business in Hungary.
"2022 brought uncertainty in a variety of areas, and these uncertainties remain. In particular, the war in Ukraine, high inflation, which was in double digits in many of our markets last year and in some cases still is, and the pandemic, which was still making its presence felt last year. Despite this volatile environment, VIG Group demonstrates good resilience, as it did in the previous year," VIG CEO Elisabeth Stadler said.
The group is active on the Bulgarian insurance market through Bulstrad non-life insurer and Bulstrad Life. It also held a stake of around 93% in Bulgaria's largest pension fund, Doverie, as of December.
($1 = 0.9314 euro)
Bulstrad Vienna Insurance Group AD is among the biggest insurers in SEE, for more reference take a look at
Top 100 insurers