Beazley announced pretax profits of £17.1m for the 12 months ending 31 December 2003, up from a loss of £1.2m in 2002.
Gross written premiums for Beazley's managed Syndicates 623 and 2623 reached £708m, up from £438m in 2002. Net earned premiums grew from £292m in 2002 to £401m.
The Lloyd's insurer said the combined ratio had improved substantially, down 12% on last year's figure of 94% to 82%. It said it had an 11% increase in its year-on-year renewal rate for 2003, with a 21% increase in speciality lines.
Beazley said it had an approved capacity for 2004 of £741m, of which the group would support £397m.
The volume of the transactions underwritten by the company went up 39% from 9,461 to 13,188.
Chief executive Andrew Beazley said: “Beazley is delivering on its promises and we look forward to continuing to consolidate on our growth.
“We are writing an increasing proportion of medium tail, specialty line business to take advantage of the favourable rating environment in this market. We expect the strong underwriting environment to continue to support healthy returns.”
