Allianz: Sees Full-Year Combined Ratio 97%-98% For 2009

Allianz SE (ALV.XE) expects a combined ratio in its property/casualty insurance business in a 97% to 98% range for 2009, Chief Financial Officer Oliver Baete said Monday.

Baete, who took up the position Sept. 1, told journalists in a conference call that the insurer's third-quarter combined ratio of 96.9% was just below the 97% Allianz targets for the full year, or the broader 97%-98% range that it expects to post annually.

"We target 97%, market expectation is for 98%, we are working very hard to reach the 97%, but in the end it may be 98%," Baete said.

The combined ratio measures an insurer's underwriting performance by comparing costs and revenue; a figure below 100% means the underwriting result, when stripping out the investment result, was profitable. A figure of 90% is good, 70% is excellent.

For instance, insurers had to pay claims caused by hailstorms in Germany and Central Europe and Canada, an industrial fire claim in Russia and a flood in the Philippines in the third quarter. Baete said other factors, such as additional reserving for previous claims that turned out to be more expensive than initially thought also drove the combined ratio higher in the quarter

Allianz had a combined ratio of 98.9% in the second quarter and of 98.7% in the first quarter.

-By Ulrike Dauer, Dow Jones Newswires; [phone]; [e-mail]