Swiss Re beats profit expectations despite disasters

Reinsurer Swiss Re announced nine-month earnings on Friday that beat expectations despite high payouts for natural disasters in the third quarter, including floods in Europe and Hurricane Ida.

Over the first nine months of this year the company, which provides insurance for other insurance firms, posted a net profit of $1.3 billion (1 billion euros) compared to a loss of 691 million during the same period last year.

That beat the analyst consensus forecast of $880 million calculated by Swiss news financial news agency AWP.

Stripping out compensation paid out for Covid-19 related claims, net profit rose by 38 percent from the same period last year to $2.3 billion.

Swiss Re’s performance last year was hammered last year by the pandemic, in particular for claims due to cancelled events.

It also suffered a loss in its property division due to the costs of natural disasters.

These ran up to $1.7 billion in the first nine months of this year due to Hurricane Ida, which caused severe flooding around New York City days after it slammed ashore in Louisiana, as well as the ice storm in February that lashed much of North America, and floods in Europe in July.