Allianz Australia Establishes Marine Underwriting Agency

Allianz Australia said it has set up a new specialist marine underwriting agency, Allianz Marine & Transit, managing the underwriting, claims and business development for nonpleasure craft marine business in Australia and New Zealand.

AM&T will complement Allianz's pleasure craft insurer, Club Marine. The new underwriting agency will be headquartered in Sydney and led by Stephen Ford, a specialist in marine underwriting, according to the company.

The insurer said it intends to develop this specialist market with focused agency structures while providing service and claims propositions for its brokers and customers, said Jonathan Poole, chief general manager of broker and agency business for Allianz Australia, in a statement.

Allianz Asia Pacific, another subsidiary of Allianz SE, reported that costly natural catastrophe losses in the Asia-Pacific region, a volatile global investment market and stricter regulatory reserves requirements all contributed to a 20.7% drop in regional revenue in 2011 (Best's News Service, March 5, 2012).

Total revenue fell to 7.3 billion euros (US$9.6 billion) in 2011, from 9.2 billion euros in the previous year. Operating profit fell nearly 50% to 170 million euros, from 337 million euros in 2010.

The decline was partly due to regulation-induced reinforcements of loss reserves for commercial motor insurance in India, in addition to technical reserves for the life insurance operations in Taiwan and South Korea. Excluding these one-off effects, underlying profit was 288 million euros, according to Allianz.

Allianz SE currently has a Best's Financial Strength Rating of A+ (Superior).

(By Rebecca Ng, Hong Kong news editor: [email protected])