Esure growth drive continues despite home cutbacks

Personal ines insurer Esure has grown its total gross written premium (GWP) by 25.4% in the first nine months of 2017 as it continues its “footprint expansion” growth strategy.

This is despite continued cutbacks in home business, which it does not believe it can grow profitably in current market conditions

As a result of the overall growth, the company snow expects growth for the full year to exceed previous expectations, and is now estimating premium growth of between 20% and 25% for the full year.

The company also said in its trading update this morning that it is expecting its full-year combined operating ratio (COR) to be “at the lower end” of its target range of 96% to 98%.

Esure growth

Esure wrote £625.8m of gross premium in the first nine months of 2017, up from £499m in the same period last year.

This was mainly down to the 30.4% growth in motor GWP, its biggest line, to £561.5m from £430.6m.

Home GWP, meanwhile, fell 6% to £64.3m (nine months 2016: £68.4m)

Additional services revenues grew 16% to £93.6m (none months 2016: £80.6m).

The trends were also reflected in policy numbers.

Esure’s overall policy count was up 10.4% to 2.3 million (none months 2016: 2.1 million) thanks to a 19% increase in motor polies to 1.8 million (nine months 2016: 1.5 million).

Home policies in force fell 14.1% to 494,000 (nine months 2016: 575,000).

Esure chief executive Stuart Vann said that in motor Esure was “continuing to see the benefits of our proven underwriting expertise and footprint expansion programme which enable us to offer more and more customers access to our excellent products and services”.

He added: “Meanwhile, we remain disciplined in Home, as current market conditions do not provide opportunities for profitable growth.”