Liberty Mutual Holding Co. reported third-quarter net income of $219 million, reversing a loss of $353 million a year ago during the same time.
“Solid underwriting results in our Global Risk Solutions business and the tailwind from rising net investment income helped offset continued pressure from inflation and severe weather impacting U.S. personal lines,” said Tim Sweeney, Liberty Mutual CEO, in a statement.
Third-quarter net written premiums in Global Risk Solutions decreased 3.4 percent year over year to about $4.2 billion. U.S. Retail Markets NWP increase 0.8 percent to about $8 billion as Liberty Mutual continues “to take aggressive rate and non-rate actions to return that business to target profitability,” Sweeney added.
Boston-based Liberty Mutual’s total combined ratio for Q3 was 102.6, down from 106.7 a year ago. Catastrophes of about $1.1 billion added 9.6 points during the quarter. A $192 million addition to loss reserves added another 1.7 points to the combined ratio. Sweeney said Liberty Mutual has a target combined ratio of 95.
For the nine months of 2023, Liberty Mutual posted a net loss attributable to LMHC of $441 million compared to a net loss of $198 million in 2022. For the first half of 2023, Liberty Mutual recorded a net loss of $650 million.
Late last month Liberty Mutual confirmed layoffs of about 850 workers, or 2 percent of its workforce, in the U.S. Employees in Liberty’s Retail Markets and Global Risk Solutions business units, as well as technology and other corporate groups will be affected.