IGI Bermuda gets provisional approval to write US E&S business

Dubai insurer International General Insurance Holdings (IGI) has been given the green light to begin writing US excess and surplus lines (E&S) business on 1 April from its Bermuda subsidiary, subject to the execution of a trust agreement for the platform.

The company said in a statement that IGI Bermuda plans to write short-tail E&S business in energy, property and political violence specialty lines.

The subsidiary is expected to be named on the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) April quarterly listing of alien insurers.

The E&S entry by IGI’s Bermuda platform comes at a time of surging growth in the sector, driven by record submission levels and a hard market across many lines of business after retrenchment by admitted and non-admitted carriers in the US commercial insurance industry.

AM Best A-rated IGI has operations in Bermuda, London, Amman, Labuan and Casablanca.

It is in the closing stages of reversing into a blank check shell company, Tiberius, ahead of a $500mn+ listing on Nasdaq scheduled for next week (17 March).

The proposed listing will initially value IGI at 1.22x book.

Earlier this month the insurer gave an upbeat assessment of the rating environment, saying it experienced average rate renewal increases of 29.7 percent on its specialty long-tail book and 19.1 percent on its specialty short-tail accounts in the fourth quarter.

IGI grew net written premium by 24 percent to $252mn from 2018 to 2019. It posted an after-tax profit of $23.5mn and a combined ratio of 94 percent.