Hastings Group reports robust performance for first quarter 2023

Hastings Group (‘Hastings’), the technology driven UK insurance provider, reports on performance for the 3 months ended 31 March 2023.

Toby van der Meer, Group CEO, commented:

“Hastings delivered robust results for the first quarter of 2023 during what continues to be a challenging market. Claims inflation remains elevated and weather events in January and March increased claims volumes over normal experience for the quarter. Against this back drop, Hastings has maintained its pricing discipline and continued to increase prices over the quarter.

“Overall written premiums increased 39%, whilst policy count increased 4% year on year. Uncertainty remains given the combination of market challenges, the wider cost of living crises and high UK inflation, and I’m proud of the actions we’ve taken to support our customers and colleagues whilst investing in new capabilities to become the UK’s best and biggest digital insurance provider.

“As always, I’d like to thank my Hastings colleagues for their fantastic work, commitment and contribution.”

Financial highlights

Robust performance for the 3 months ended 31 March 2023, including:

• Gross written premium growth of 39% year on year to £320.3m, reflecting a focus on pricing discipline in a market experiencing elevated claims inflation. Hastings has applied significant price increases during Q1 2023 on both Motor and Home insurance.
• Increases in premiums across the market have led to increased customer use of PCWs and switching to Hastings. This, together with continued high retention rates, has meant total live customer policies (‘LCP’) increased 4% year on year to 3.3m. Home, in particular, experienced strong growth, with LCP increasing 36% year on year to 448,000.
• The calendar year loss ratio for Q1 2023 was 66.1% (11.1 percentage points up year-on-year), reflecting an increase in claims frequencies and continued high claims inflation. The frequency increase was mainly driven by the weather-related events in January and March 2023, resulting in a net cost of approximately £8m above historical averages for the period.
• Profit before tax of £8.4m (Q1 2022: £17.8m), reflects the impact of poor weather conditions in January and March 2023 and interest rate movements compared with Q1 2022.

Strategic and operational initiatives

Continued investment in strategic initiatives in 2023:​​​​

• Focus on development of data platforms, data engineering skills and modelling capabilities to support leading edge pricing and antifraud capabilities.
• Continued roll out of the online-only product and YouDrive (the Hastings app based telematics product).
• Further releases of the Hastings mobile app, enhancing functionality and improving customer experience. The mobile app continues to be one of the highest rated and most used in the market.
• Continued focus on customer experience, with combined digital Net Promoter Score (‘NPS’) ahead of last year and continued strong retention rates.
• A new digital claims notification capability went live on the mobile app in March, with positive feedback from customers, higher online completion rates and an improved NPS. Further digitalisation of claims planned during 2023.
• Rollout of initiatives to improve operational efficiency through reduction of claims handling costs, automation of key processes and investments in Guidewire and telephony platforms.

Our colleagues and communities

Firmly committed to supporting colleagues and the communities in which we operate:

• Bringing in more capability through our highest intake of graduates, interns and apprentices for 2023, including new schemes in Data, Fraud, Claims and Technology. Q1 saw a record number of applicants for our 2023 early careers offering. 
• Continued focus on increasing gender diversity in insurance leadership; building internal and external mentoring through the 30% Club, our first Tech Returners programme, Women in Data sponsorship and development.  
• Significant focus on colleague engagement with Colleague Roadshows delivered to over 3,100 colleagues, including reminders of financial and wellbeing resources available to help with cost of living support.
• Colleague-led Inclusion Council continues to highlight diversity and inclusion events including International Women’s Day, Neurodiversity Week and the religious festivals of Holi and Ramadan.
• Over 640 community hours donated by colleagues to our local communities in the first three months of 2023.
• Certified CarbonNeutral® for a fourth year running whilst we work to develop our science-based targets in line with SBTi. Reduced overall carbon footprint by 59% compared to our 2019 baseline (exceeding our original target of 50% reduction by 2022).

 

​​​​​​Ends

For more information, please contact pr@hastingsdirect.com.