Qatar Insurance Company Q.S.P.C. (QATI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to the Qatar Insurance Conference. I would like to advise all participants that this call is being recorded. Thank you. I'd now like to welcome Shahan to begin the conference. Hand over to you.

Thank you, Wan. Hello, everyone. I want to welcome you to QIC's Third Quarter 2022 Financial Results Conference Call. On this call from the company's management, we have Varghese David, the Group CFO; Chirag Doshi, Group CIO; Mena Mounir, Senior VP Group Finance. So we will conduct this conference with first management reviewing the company's results followed by Q&A. I will now turn the call over to Varghese. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Welcome once again to our quarterly call. QIC group for Q3 reported a gross written premium of USD 2.2 million. We also reported a net profit of USD 157 million from the continuing operations of our business and a loss of USD 189 million from our discontinued operations for the first 9 months of 2022. While QIC's domestic business in Qatar and MENA recorded another strong performance in the first 9 months of '22, turning into an underwriting profit and the gross written premium for the region grew by 14% to reach USD 649 million compared to $568 million in the first 9 months of 2022. Volume growth has been mainly driven by the strong demand for QIC's market-leading online and digital product offerings in the region. Meanwhile, the group's international operations, QIC Global which had recently announced its intention to align its core companies under the Antares brand name, generated USD 1.5 billion in premium income, the premium -- gross written premium representing almost 70% of the group's total gross premium. In line with the group's strategy to restructure or exit from low-margin or loss-making businesses, QIC group announced its intention to divest from the Gibraltar-based insurance carriers. This is in continuation of the group strategy set out in 2018, '19 to start the process of derisking in a phased manner, low margin and high combined ratio business and to focus on bottom line-oriented business, which has a set minimum RORAC, return on risk-adjusted capital. During Q3, QIC has decided to divest from the Gibraltar-based direct insurance carriers and QIC has received an offer for purchase from a reputable institution [ Bio ], which is under negotiation currently. The proposed divestment plan is subject to approval by the concerned regulatory authorities. During Q3 as you're all aware of, I mean the market has seen strong headwinds arising from the soaring inflation, the geopolitical uncertainties arising from Ukraine and Russian war, the financial market volatility. In this background, QIC group generated an underwriting income of USD 75 million for the first 9 months of reporting. And our combined ratio for the continued operation currently stands at 99.3% compared to the 99.8% for the reported period for the last year. Our investment income, which amounted to $184 million, which an annualized return of currently around 4%, again, demonstrates the consistent, I mean, delivery our investment teams have been always been delivering. Our, I mean, operational ratio continue to excel because based on the IT advancements we have done through our wholly-owned IT subsidiary Anoud Technologies wherein we have been able to embed the most advanced RPA, artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques. And that we are seeing, I mean, the impact of the improved operational ratio quarter-by-quarter. The other key development during this quarter has been, I mean, our progress in the Vision Insurance merger, which is going on, that is progressing as per the plan. We are expecting that to be completed in the coming quarters. So this is an overall summary of the Q3 results. And if you have any further queries, we are welcome to answer your -- all your queries.

Wan, we can go for Q&A now please.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn back the call to Shahan.

All right. We don't have any questions. I'd like to thank QIC's management for giving us an update for the quarter and we'll pick this up again in the fourth quarter. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for organizing this call.