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Excellent Results for Admiral Group on its 10th Anniversary

The Admiral Group, one of the leading direct response car insurers in the UK, announced its results for 2002, highlighted by a record profit of £55m on turnover of £378m. The profit figure is 49% higher than 2001 (£37m).

Employing nearly 1,500 people in two sites in South Wales, the Admiral Group sells car insurance to private individuals through targeted brands, including Admiral, Bell Direct, Diamond and elephant.co.uk. Launched on 2nd January 1993, 2002 completes Admiral's first 10 years of trading.

The Group's accounts show a combined ratio of 80%. Key to this result was a claims ratio of 64.6% coupled with an expense ratio of 15.4%. This combined ratio ranks the Admiral Group top amongst its competitor peer group (see table below). (Note: if non-recurring items are added back into the expense ratio the figure drops below 10%, which produces a combined ratio of 74.1%.)

The Group's written premium income for 2002, after accounting for premium ceded to reinsurers, was £69m out of a total written premium of £333m. The number of customers grew by 16% to 705,000 from 608,500.

"We're one of the most efficient companies in the market, which gives us the ability to pass savings back to consumers while still growing our business profitably," said Henry Engelhardt, Admiral chief executive. "These are fantastic numbers and go a long way to dispelling the myth of 'critical mass'. We're quite a bit smaller than our peer group, yet we have the best combined ratio."

Engelhardt went on to say, "We take great pride in producing such results and being able to provide good returns for our investors and reinsurers alike. We have a fantastic team at Admiral that works very hard to provide customers with a superb service, which, in turn, leads to such good results."

Issue date: 07-04-03