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| CUSTOMER SATISFACTION INCREASING |
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Overall customer satisfaction in IAG’s key direct motor and home books has steadily increased over the past four years. |
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| AWARD-WINNING PERFORMANCE |
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In this section:
Performing in a complex operating environment
Consistently strong results
Strong investment returns
Progress against strategic goals
Our people
Looking forward
We consider long term thinking as key to running a business that deals in risk. That’s why we are calling this report ‘part two’ of our ongoing risk management story. By sticking to our principles – paying claims, understanding and pricing risk, managing costs and reducing risk – we’ll be here for the long term. That means we can generate consistent returns for our shareholders, create a stable working environment for our people, make a positive contribution to society and provide security for our customers.
PERFORMING IN A COMPLEX
OPERATING ENVIRONMENT
IAG posted another year of record results in a complex operating environment, demonstrating our commitment to managing the business in such a way as to deliver sustainable long term benefits.
Despite the prolonged drought which continued to affect most of Australia during the year, the Group experienced the impact of a number of severe storms. The worst of these hit Melbourne and Sydney in early February 2005 resulting in nearly 25,000 claims. New Zealand also suffered serious floods, hailstorms and landslips. The Group incurred more than $340 million in claims for weather-related events.
The regulatory and legislative landscape continued to evolve. During the year, we made 18 submissions to various government inquiries and reviews into activities affecting the general insurance industry. In addition, our industry body, the Insurance Council of Australia, made on average more than one submission every week. Submissions IAG made related to:
The tort law reforms introduced by the States and Territories started to deliver what communities, insurers and governments set out to do – access to public liability insurance has broadened and rates have fallen, injured people continue to be compensated and legal expenses are reducing.
Australia’s economy continued to grow, with record low unemployment and low inflation, leading to ongoing investment in new cars, houses, household goods and business – all of which creates a demand for insurance. Similar trends were displayed in New Zealand.
The Australian share market recorded healthy double-digit growth, with the S&P/ASX200 up around 26% compared to 30 June 2004.
At the same time, competition in the insurance industry intensified, both in commercial and retail classes. The competitive pressures were most apparent in the larger commercial customer segments, arising from increased activity by off-shore insurers.
CONSISTENTLY STRONG RESULTS
Consistently achieving quality results in this complex, and increasingly competitive operating environment, demonstrates our commitment to managing the business for the long term.
The Group achieved a net profit attributable to shareholders of $760 million, up from $665 million in the previous corresponding period.
We’ve done this by adhering to tight underwriting disciplines and focusing on building stronger customer relationships through initiatives to better align our products, service and distribution networks with our customers’ needs, while reducing costs.
In our Australian personal insurance operations, customer retention in our key direct motor and home insurance portfolios has been higher than 90% for the past three years, satisfaction continues to improve and we’ve strengthened the depth of our customer relationships.
More than 68% of our direct home insurance customers now hold more than one policy with us, there’s been an increase in the take-up of optional covers and new products have been well received by the market. Sales of our new landlords insurance product already exceed 3,000 policies monthly.
Tight disciplines were also applied in our Australian commercial insurance business, where we improved our insurance margin by 7.6% to 17.2%. We were able to achieve this by focusing on the SME and rural markets where we have the largest distribution network and significantly enhancing our service through initiatives such as online sales and claims processing.
Our New Zealand business also delivered stronger insurance margins by building on its market leading position through enhancements to its distribution capabilities and further improvements to customer service and delivery standards.
CGU and NZI, which were acquired in January 2003, are now fully integrated into the Group. This is the first year we’ve had a full contribution from these synergies without incurring any integration costs.
As a result, we achieved a Group insurance margin of 16.3%, up from 13.5% in the previous financial year.
STRONG INVESTMENT RETURNS
Our result was boosted by the Group’s highest ever investment income, driven by highly favourable investment markets over the year and significant value added by the Group’s in-house asset management team.
The Group’s investment portfolio, totalling approximately $10 billion at year end, returned 11.0% during the year. Outperformance of portfolio benchmarks by our asset management team contributed an additional $100 million to pre-tax profit.
Investment return on shareholders’ funds contributed $479 million to the Group’s pre-tax result. That’s a record return since listing and a 10.4% increase from the $434 million recorded on this portfolio in the previous corresponding period.
Investment returns from claims reserves also performed well. Over the year, the income from this portfolio contributed $516 million to the Group’s pre-tax insurance result.
Going forward, IAG’s asset managers will continue to focus on delivering superior risk adjusted returns on IAG’s assets and on additional external client accounts. Through further diversification of our investments, we aim to retain our strong levels of performance while at the same time reduce both our absolute level of risk and the volatility of our earnings.
PROGRESS AGAINST STRATEGIC GOALS
IAG’s strategic direction has remained clear, as we’ve focused our business on general insurance to achieve sustainable, quality growth.
Our priority has been our home markets in Australia and New Zealand. Now that we’ve generated scale, we continue to look for ways to increase value and service for our customers and to operate our business more efficiently. To maintain growth at the level necessary to remain competitive, we recognise that international expansion is required to generate incremental revenue streams and to further diversify our risks.
To guide the Group’s progress against this strategy, we set five medium term financial goals.
The Group’s first goal is to achieve top quartile total shareholder return. Since listing in 2000, IAG’s total shareholder return ranks us in the top 20% of the entities in the S&P/ASX 100.
Our second goal, which we also met, is to achieve a return on equity of at least 1.5 times the weighted average cost of capital. We set this goal to ensure that shareholders receive an adequate return. We don’t expect to sustain returns much above this level, as excess returns will be invested back into the business.
Progress was made on our third goal to establish an Asian foothold. In July 2005, the Group acquired a small general insurer in Thailand, formerly owned by Royal & SunAlliance Insurance Group, to add to our growing portfolio of assets in Asia.
This is our second investment in Thailand, having held a 22% shareholding in Safety Insurance since 1998. It allows us to diversify our interest in the growing Thai general insurance market and ensures we will be a player in that market’s anticipated consolidation.
We will continue to research other potential acquisition opportunities in Asia, using stringent due diligence processes, to provide additional earnings growth for the long term.
We also met our fourth goal to maintain an 80:20 mix of short-tail:long-tail premiums. We consider this to be the best mix to enable us to keep risk at a tolerable level. This is because claims made for short-tail insurance, such as a home or motor insurance policy, are less difficult to predict than claims made for long-tail insurance, such as a workers’ compensation policy.
Importantly, we met our final goal to maintain our very strong ‘AA’ Standard & Poor’s insurer financial strength ratings for our key wholly-owned entities. That’s a signal to our customers that we have the financial strength to be able to honour our promises to customers to pay their claims.
OUR PEOPLE
Achieving this progress would not have been possible without the dedication and talent of the more than 12,000 people who work for IAG. To all of our people, I say a big thank you.
During the year, we continued to focus on strengthening our internal culture by aligning our people around a consistent purpose and a common set of values – honesty, meritocracy, transparency, teamwork, and social responsibility. A strong culture is vital for providing a framework for decision-making which will ensure a consistent, quality customer experience.
Flexibility, valuing differences and creating the right work environment are equally important aspects of workplace sustainability at IAG, to ensure we can attract, hire and retain the right talent.
To meet these challenges, we’ve focused on embedding programmes designed to develop our people’s skills and knowledge, provide a flexible and safe work environment, reward strong performance and develop fulfilling career paths. The success of our internal programmes is reflected in the improved engagement results scored in our annual survey of all employees.
To ensure our people can benefit directly from the value they are helping to create, the Group announced it will introduce a new employee share scheme this year.
My management team has played an important role in leading our people, strengthening our collective capabilities and consistently applying our values, policies and processes, to help improve our people’s engagement and performance. I’d like to thank them for their efforts.
LOOKING FORWARD
Our strategy remains unchanged. We will continue to optimise our businesses in Australia and New Zealand and maintain high levels of customer service. We will also continue our search for additional opportunities to expand our portfolio of assets across Asia, when the right opportunities arise.
Our aim remains to deliver top quartile total shareholder return. We expect our insurance margin to reduce a little but remain above the more sustainable levels experienced in the 2004 financial year. This reflects our belief that an insurance company’s performance needs to be viewed over the long term, given the influence of cyclical factors, such as underwriting conditions, weather patterns and investment returns.
Importantly, we will continue to stick to our principles – paying claims, understanding and pricing risk, managing costs and reducing risk – to ensure we are here for the long term.
Michael Hawker
Chief Executive Officer
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