Ageas’ chief bearish on commercial hardening
Barry Smith, chief executive of Ageas UK, has described himself as “very pleased” with the step change from loss to profit at the insurer but admitted he was not confident of seeing any commercial market hardening in 2012.
"I'm pretty bearish on it [commercial rate hardening]," he told Insurance Age. "Logic would say yes it should [happen] but the reality may be different."
Mr Smith made the admission as the insurer revealed a £105m profit for 2011, reversing a loss of £28.4m the year before.
In among the results was a pre-tax profit of £8.2m from the joint venture with Tesco Underwriting which Mr Smith stated was evidence that the overall return to profit had been driven by improvements in all areas of the
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