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LONDON (Alliance News) - FBD Holdings PLC, an Ireland property and casualty insurer, Tuesday said it now expects to report a full-year operating loss per share, excluding any "exceptional" events that may arise, citing a more challenging claims environment than expected.
In a statement, FBD Holdings guided an operating result per share for the full year of between zero and a loss of 10 euro cents. It had previously guided full-year operating earnings per share of 70 to 80 cents per share.
"Although the frequency of attritional bodily injury claims relating to car insurance was in line with expectation, in other respects the claims environment in recent months has been far more challenging than expected," FBD said in a statement.
According to FBD, in the first nine months of the year, the Irish insurance market grew for the first time since 2003 as the industry began to benefit from recent growth in economic activity and hardening car insurance rates.
It said its own gross written premium written to date was ahead of the previous year by about 4%, "marginally increasing" its share of the insurance market.
The group said its premium growth was entirely led by rates in the second half of 2014 to date.
FBD shares were untraded in London on Tuesday at EUR12.30.
By Samuel Agini; samagini@alliancenews.com; @samuelagini
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