Doha, 15th February 2021: Qatar Insurance Group, the leading insurer in the MENA region yesterday announced its financial results for 2020. Following a meeting of the Board of Directors, which was presided over by Mr. Abdulla Bin Khalifa Al-Attiya, Deputy Chairman, the Board approved the financial results for the year 2020. 

2020 was one of the most challenging year for the global insurance industry. The impact of COVID-19 on global insurance markets was largely felt through the deluge of insurance claims together with the impact on investment income by elevated levels of capital markets volatility. The global insurance industry has estimated that the 2020 losses arising from COVID-19 pandemic were in excess of USD 200 billion.
The global insurance industry also had to absorb one of worst catastrophe losses during the year with an estimated USD 83 billion insured loss, the 5th costliest in history.

While QIC Group’s international business was impacted by global losses arising from the COVID-19 pandemic and from catastrophe losses, Mena insurance operations once again delivered an outstanding performance during the year. The COVID-19 pandemic enforced strict lockdown measures helped to maintain satisfactory performance, as motor and medical lines of business saw reduced claims activity. 

Gross written premiums for the year remained stable at QAR 12.20 billion, compared to QAR 12.06 billion for 2019. QIC’s MENA direct operations reported Gross Written Premiums of QAR 2.3 billion, compared to QAR 2.2 billion in 2019. 

Our successful positioning as one of the most digitally transformed insurance company in the region in the personal line segment, witnessed major growth in the B2C and B2B channels of business during the pandemic. Meanwhile our international business continued its process of de-risking non profitable business and carefully allocating risk capacity from high severity, capital intensive risks to less volatile and lower severity lines of business. The Gross Written Premiums for our international operations stood at QAR 9.9 billion, as compared to QAR 9.8 billion in 2019. Our international business now accounts for 81% of the Group’s total premium base.

QIC Group’s net underwriting results for the year were directly impacted by the losses arising from the reported global market events of COVID-19 pandemic losses and abnormal catastrophe losses. The Group’s net underwriting result stood at a loss of QAR 595 million, as compared to profit of QAR 282 million in 2019. The Group also continued to follow its prudent reserve strengthening policy across the international business. On the other hand, with the exit of several key international insurer’s from the GCC region our direct business in Qatar and the MENA region continued to strongly consolidate its leading position by demonstrating consistent growth across select lines of business and delivering consistent and healthy underwriting profits. 
In 2020, the investment team of QIC Group once again proved its mettle. 

Despite the exceptional volatility in global financial markets, QIC’s investment portfolio performed reasonably well. For the year 2020, the Group registered an investment and other income of QAR 1,366 million, as compared to QAR 1,036 million in 2019. On a year-to-year basis this reflects an annualized return on investment, excluding one-off gains, of 3.5%. In 2020, QIC was named for the third year in a row as the “Top Investment House” by The Asset magazine, recognizing its superior asset management capabilities.

 
Epicure Investment Management Limited, QIC Group’s wholly owned investment management company is the largest investment manager in Qatar with investments assets in excess of USD 7 billion (including external AUM’s) and is also one of the largest Investment Manager in GCC. The Epicure team employs best in class qualified investment professionals and will be one of the key non-insurance channels of revenue for the Group.

Despite the ongoing global uncertainties of historic proportions, and as a testament of offering excellent security to policyholders, our Group’s capital and liquidity position continue to be robust. The Group continues to ensure that the appropriate risk adjusted levels of capital redundancy from a regulatory and S&P/AM Best rating point of view is maintained. 

As part of the Group’s strategy to generate new channels of revenue, QIC Group entered into a strategic collaboration with Swiss Re, a leading global reinsurance company, to offer its inhouse-developed, best-in-class fully integrated, digitally transformed insurance IT platform called Anoud+ to third party insurers in developed and emerging markets alike. As part of the collaboration, QIC will integrate specialised offerings into its platform to help insurers oversee and manage their underwriting strategy and monitor their exposure to natural catastrophes. Pursuant to this, QIC established a wholly owned IT services subsidiary of QIC Group called Anoud Technologies LLC (Anoud Tech).

QIC's continued endeavour towards process efficiency and automation resulted in further improvement of its already exceptionally low administrative expense ratio for its core operations to 6.2%.

In total, the Group reported a consolidated net profit of QAR 126 million for 2020 compared with QAR 671 million for the previous year which resulted in Earnings Per Share of QAR (0.004) per share (2019: QAR 0.174 per share).

The Board proposed the non-distribution of divided for the year 2020 taking into consideration the insignificant net profit achieved during the year.
Commenting on QIC Group’s financial performance for the year 2020, Mr. Khalifa Abdulla Turki Al Subaey, Group President of QIC Group said, “QIC Group benefits from its very strong and robust risk-based capital adequacy in combination with the scale and diversification of our business portfolio. We are encouraged by the resilience that QIC Group has demonstrated in these unprecedented times. While consumers and businesses in major economies were in lockdown, we continued to generate strong organic growth originating from our online personal insurance business in the MENA region, a clear testimony to the strength and goodwill of the QIC brand and the trust and confidence customers place in the Group. The growth was further benefited from the hardening of commercial rates.”