LONDON (Reuters) - British motor and home insurer RSA (L:RSA) posted an above-forecast operating profit of 360 million pounds ($475.45 million) in the first half, led by strong performances in Canada and Scandinavia, it said on Wednesday.
Operating profit rose 15 percent from a year earlier, RSA said in a trading statement. Analysts had forecast operating profit of 338 million pounds, according to a company-supplied consensus forecast.
Best known in Britain for its More Than brand, RSA has been selling businesses and cutting costs under chief executive Stephen Hester, the former boss of Royal Bank of Scotland (L:RBS), who joined in 2014 to overhaul the company.
The restructuring is now complete, RSA said.
"While RSA is now measuring against higher performance standards, there is much more that can be done to
improve," Hester said.
RSA's combined ratio, a measure of underwriting profitability, strengthened to a record 93.2 percent. A level below 100 percent indicates a profit.
The firm's Scandinavian and Canadian businesses did well, despite some large losses in Canada, RSA said. Its Irish business, hit by an accounting scandal in 2013, returned to profit.
However, group underwriting profit for RSA's UK business dropped nearly 80 percent to 17 million pounds following an unexpected large cut in the rate used to calculate personal injury claims, pushing up the size of those payments.
Underlying return on tangible equity was 16.6 percent, against a target range of 13-17 percent and forecast 15.3 percent.
Net written premiums rose 11 percent to 3.4 billion pounds on a reported currency basis, against a forecast 3.35 billion.
RSA said it would pay an interim dividend of 6.6 pence, up 32 percent but below a forecast 7 pence.