Date

3 November, 2022

Categories

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Hastings Group (‘Hastings’), the technology driven UK insurance provider, announces its results for the nine months ended 30 September 2022.

Toby van der Meer, Group CEO, commented:

“These are highly uncertain times for the country as well as UK insurance markets. Given this, I’m very pleased with the actions taken and the delivery of another solid set of results. In particular, Hastings has priced ahead of the market to combat claims inflation, which is estimated at 12% in Q3, and has taken actions on pay and bonuses to support colleagues who have been impacted by cost of living increases. Hastings also continues to make great progress on the technology agenda, and continues to invest to be the UK’s leading digital insurance provider.

“As always, I’d like to thank my 3,200 Hastings colleagues for their great work.”

Financial highlights

Solid results for the nine months to 30 September 2022, including:

  • Gross written premium increased 11% year on year to £834.2m.
  • Total live customer policies (‘LCP’) increased 2% year on year to almost 3.2 million. Home LCP increased 28% year on year to 388,000.
  • Adjusted operating profit of £104.3m and profit before tax of £55.3m.
  • Pricing discipline continues to be prioritised over volume growth in a market that continues to experience elevated claims inflation.

Strategic and operational initiatives

Continued investment in strategic initiatives:

  • Development and launch of new data and pricing initiatives to support more accurate pricing.
  • The launch of further enhancements to anti-fraud capabilities.
  • Record new business sales of the multicar proposition and of the online-only product.
  • The launch of new digital capabilities to improve customer experience, including enhanced mobile app services for mid-term adjustments and renewals.
  • Continued progress with the claims transformation programme, which is delivering multi-million pound savings helping to mitigate the impact of claims inflation.

Our colleagues and communities

Ongoing commitment to supporting colleagues and the communities in which Hastings operates:

  • Provided colleagues with additional financial support, including immediate salary increases, brought forward bonus payments, and the relaunch of the Colleague Hardship Fund to help colleagues experiencing acute financial difficulty. 
  • Continued high colleague engagement scores, with good progress on colleague development. 
  • Commitment to responsible investment by becoming a signatory of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI).
  • Over 4,000 community hours donated by colleagues, supporting charities including Warming Up the Homeless, Bowel Cancer UK, Educations Futures Trust, and many more.
  • 2022/23 Futuready education course launched in Bexhill, supporting more than 100 year-nine students.


Ends

For more information, please contact pr@hastingsdirect.com

  

About Hastings

Founded in 1996 in Bexhill-on-Sea on the Sussex coast, the Hastings Group is one of the leading general insurance providers to the UK market, with nearly 3.2 million live customer policies and employing 3,200 colleagues.

Hastings provides simple and straightforward products and services to UK car, bike, van and home insurance customers with approximately 90% of policies directly underwritten by the Group's Gibraltar based Underwriting business, Advantage Insurance Company Limited.

Hastings Direct is a trading name of Hastings Insurance Services Limited, the Group's UK broker, which also trades via 'Hastings Premier', 'Hastings Essential', 'Hastings Direct YouDrive', 'People's Choice' and 'insurePink'.

The Group operates as an insurance provider with two separate businesses. The Group's Retail business, Hastings Insurance Services Limited, is responsible for the end customer pricing, fraud management, product design, distribution and management of the underlying customer relationships. The Group's Underwriting business, Advantage Insurance Company Limited, engages in risk selection, underlying technical pricing, reserving and claims handling. Retail is supported by, and benefits from, Underwriting's cautious approach to risk and reserving and from a panel of insurance partners which provide additional underwriting capacity. The Group's business model deliberately separates underlying product manufacturing from its distribution.

For more information visit the Hastings Group website

Date

3 November, 2022

Categories

No topics.