Travelers Catastrophe Losses Rise

Source: WSJ | Published on July 23, 2020

Travelers earnings

Travelers Cos reported a loss in line with Wall Street expectations as net investment income dove lower from a year earlier and catastrophe losses rose.

The property-casualty insurance company swung to a loss of $40 million, or 16 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier profit of $557 million, or $2.10 a share. The company’s core loss was 20 cents a share.

Core results leave out nonrecurring items, investment portfolio losses and realized capital gains.

Net investment income before tax, was $268 million, down from $648 million a year ago, Travelers said.

Net written premiums were $7.35 billion, which according to FactSet was in line with Wall Street’s consensus. They fell more than 1%, while total revenue declined over 5% to $7.4 billion.

The company reported pretax catastrophe losses of $854 million, up from $367 million a year ago.

Travelers said the “net impact of Covid-19 and related economic conditions on underwriting results…was modest.”

Travelers said that due to PG&E Corp. coming out of bankruptcy, it expects to have a prior-year net reserve development for the current quarter of about $400 million before tax. The development is tied to the California wildfires in 2017 and 2018, the company said.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/travelers-reports-loss-catastrophe-losses-climb-11595504091?mod=lead_feature_below_a_pos1