R&Q's profits soar in 2019
Randall & Quilter Investment Holdings (R&Q) recorded its most profitable year ever in 2019, with both programme management and legacy business lines enjoying robust growth.
R&Q made a pre-tax profit of £40.1 million in 2019, a 180 percent increase on the £14.3 million profit generated in 2018.
The legacy business reported a 31 percent growth in gross reserves. While this represented a decline of 15 percent on the 2018 number, it completed 16 transactions over the course of the year, including two of the largest transactions in R&Q’s history.
Meanwhile, its programme management business reported gross written premiums of $369.3 million, representing a 147 percent increase over 2018. R&Q said programme management continued to expand in Q1 2020, increasing gross written premium by 30 percent from year end 2019 on an annualised basis.
R&Q noted that since 2016 it has used the legacy business infrastructure to support the growth in the fee-based and highly scalable recurring commission revenue of programme management.
In a joint statement, executive chairman Ken Randall, deputy executive chairman William Spiegel, and group chief executive Alan Quilter stressed R&Q is well positioned to capitalise on opportunities in the market presented by COVID-19.
Market conditions have encouraged it to bring forward its entry into the US excess and surplus lines programme management market, they added.
“In our legacy business we are already witnessing increased opportunities from insurance companies seeking to free-up capital by divesting insurance reserves,” R&Q’s management team, said. “In our programme management business we believe we will be able to forge new origination partnerships as existing insurance capacity may not be able to continue to provide capital support.”
R&Q predicted the Q1 COVID-19 global economic shutdown will likely be one of the largest insurance loss events on record. “This large capital event is likely to accelerate the strong secular growth we were already seeing in our two specialist businesses, programme management and legacy, as these businesses become a core and growing part of the insurance industry,” the management team said.
