Following a meeting of the Gard Board of Directors on May 12th, Gard has announced its results for the year ending February 20th 2021.
Reporting at a group level, the key financial results were:
- A profit after tax of $68m on an Estimated Total Call (ETC) basis.
- Combined ratio net of 104% on ETC basis, up from 102% the previous year.
- GWP of $922m on ETC basis, up from $874m in 2019.
- The non-technical result was a profit of $113m.
- Equity reserves of $1,263m after reducing the ETC for P&I mutual Members by 10% and returning $38m.
For the financial year to February 20th 2021 Gard achieved a return on its investments of 5%, versus 5.7% for the strategic benchmark. For the comparable period last year, Gard’s investment portfolio returned 5.8%. The size of the group’s investment portfolio as at February 20th 2021 was $2,295 million, an increase of $193m on the previous year.
Gard CEO Rolf Thore Roppestad said that “whatever we thought might lie ahead of us all this time last year, I think we can all confidently agree that the reality was not as anyone predicted”. He said that this had made for an exceptionally challenging year for everyone in the maritime industry.
“I am pleased to say that the full year results for the group have improved considerably from the half year point, at which they had been impacted by adverse events in both the maritime and financial markets”, Thore Roppestad said, noting that, while Marine & Energy had delivered a strong profit, the P&I business had been impacted by some major claims; both for Gard’s own account and Pool claims from the International Group clubs, which had risen sharply.
He said that another issue was a 50% increase in the number of people claims caused by Covid-19. “Despite incredibly challenging conditions for owners in the last year, with significant operational hurdles to overcome, Gard Members continue to run quality operations which is reflected in our results”, the CEO said, adding that “it would have been easy to allow the pandemic storm to drive us off course in our ambition to enable sustainable maritime development but looking to the future has remained a key priority. We have continued to take steps to engage industry-wide on topics that are vital to the future success of the maritime industries.” Thore Roppestad said that this was reflected in Gard’s launch of its Sustainability Report for 2020, “which sits alongside our financial results and monitors our progress against the five Sustainability Development Goals that we use as our framework for our ambitions and targets.”
Thore Roppestad also said that Gard had continued to attract more business in its Marine Hull book. “This expansion of our marine portfolio has contributed to the growth of the Nordic insurance market (Cefor), which is now larger than Lloyd’s for hull insurance”, he said.