Beazley lifts outlook after profit nearly doubles
- October 5, 2025
- Posted by: Web workers
- Category: Finance
(Reuters) — British insurer Beazley on Thursday upgraded its combined ratio forecast for 2024 after first-half pretax profit nearly doubled, boosted by growth in its property risks premiums and fewer catastrophe losses.
The insurer, which commands about 8% of the global cyber insurance market, according to analysts, had soothed investor concerns last month by saying its annual forecasts were unaffected by the CrowdStrike outage.
“Attritional losses were better and there were fewer catastrophe losses than we had budgeted for in the first half of the year,” CEO Adrian Cox told Reuters.
JPMorgan analysts said Beazley’s updated forecast assumes that both catastrophe losses and attritional claims revert back to “normal” levels in the second half, which suggests that the guidance is being set conservatively.
Beazley shares were up 10% in early trading, making it the top gainer on the London blue-chip index FTSE.
Mr. Cox told Reuters he expects the massive IT outage last month to have an impact on demand for cyber insurance, particularly outside the United States where the market is still smaller and the penetration of cyber insurance is lower.
“In terms of insurer behavior there’s long been discussion about systemic risk, this is the latest in a number of such sort of single points of failure issues that have happened this year,” he said.
“I think that needs to be absorbed by the cyber market, and I think it could have an impact on pricing,” he said, adding that the market got more competitive in the first half and he expects prices to “flatten out a little bit.”
First-half profit before tax was $728.9 million, compared with $366.4 million in the year-earlier period.
Beazley, which offers insurance for cyber liability, property, marine, reinsurance, accident and life, and political risks, said its undiscounted combined ratio is expected to be around 80%, from a previous forecast of low 80s.
A combined ratio — measuring an insurer’s profitability —of above 100 indicates an underwriting loss.
