Zurich Insurance First Half Profits Slip

ZURICH, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 11th Augst,2016) - Zurich Insurance on Thursday said first half net profits in 2016 fell due to restructuring charges relating to efforts to streamline the group.

Switzerland's largest insurance provider said net profits fell 22 percent to $1.6 billion (1.4 billion Euros) in the first six months of the year, with the figure beating the expectations of analysts at the AWP financial news agency, who had expected a figure of $1.5 billion.

Operating profits also fell 2 percent year-on-year to $2.2 billion, the group said in a statement. The general insurance unit's combined ratio -- a measure of how effective insurers are at balancing administrative costs and payouts to clients against premiums paid in -- meanwhile held at 98.

4 percent, compared with 98.3 percent a year earlier. A combined ratio of less than 100 percent indicates that an insurer is in profitable territory. "We have made significant progress over the last six months, with consistent improvement in our underlying performance in the second quarter, in the context of an ongoing challenging market environment," chief executive Mario Greco said in a statement.