Beazley PLC on Friday reported a significant increase in gross premiums written in its first quarter, due to a strong contribution from its cyber attack risk arm, and backed its combined ratio guidance for 2022.

The London-based insurer reported gross premiums written of $1.23 billion in the quarter to March 31. This reflects a 27% increase from $971 million in the comparable quarter a year before.

Premium rates on renewal business increased to 17% in the period from 16%.

Beazley reported that it started the year ‘well’, with growth slightly ahead of its expectations across all divisions. It explained that this was primarily driven by its Cyber division, where rates have nearly doubled in the first three months of 2022.

In the Cyber & Executive Risk arm, gross written premiums grew 47% to $342 million from $232 million.

Beazley’s investments and cash as at March 31 increased by 16% to $7.79 billion from $6.74 billion.

Its year-to-date investment return, however, swung to negative 1.2% from positive 0.4%. Beazley blamed this on US Treasury yields that recorded their largest quarterly increase in more than forty years, leading to ‘significant losses’ in its fixed-income investments.

‘Inflation concerns were pushing yields higher even before the Russia-Ukraine conflict and this trend has become more prevalent since,’ the company added.

It noted that it has seen a small number of claims in relation to the conflict to date and will continue to monitor the situation going forward.

Beazley said it is still confident in meeting its combined ratio guidance of around 90% for 2022. A combined ratio below 100% indicates profitable underwriting, so the lower the better.

Shares in Beazley were up 5.2% at 427.60 pence each on Friday morning in London.

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