Hiscox said its full-year pretax profits almost trebled, helped by a benign catastrophe year, as well as high property and catastrophe insurance prices.
Pretax profits for the year to Dec 31 2006 rose to £201.1m from £70.2m a year earlier.
Analysts had expected pretax profits of £170m, according to a consensus forecast supplied by the company.
Gross written premiums increased to £1.126bn from £861.2m the previous year. The combined ratio fell to 88.3% from 96%.
