Calliden is achieving significant premium increases in home insurance and strata this year, CEO Nick Kirk says.

The company increased prices on its home insurance book by 15% last month and more is to come next month, he said in a briefing to the Australian Securities Exchange today.

Mr Kirk says home insurance and residential strata properties “continue to achieve strong price rises over prior years”.

“It is too early for us to tell the impact of the price rises in March, but we do monitor what competitors are doing on a regular basis and that is leading us to put some further price rises through in May,” he says, adding the impact will be the equivalent of another 20% increase in May, or 30-40% compound this year.

Mr Kirk says retention rates are holding up quite well for both home insurance and strata, where prices have increased to reflect the cost of catastrophe reinsurance.

He says Calliden is getting mid single-digit price rises on most of its commercial book, but more where there have been large losses, and motor insurance continues to grow and perform well.

Floods in the first quarter were within Calliden’s claims expectations and the company is on track to achieve a modest full-year profit.

The group has only one claim – $70,000 – from the Queensland floods in January-February before reinsurance, and 30 claims from the floods in NSW and Victoria in February-March with a current cost of $517,000 before reinsurance. The two events compared with five in the same period last year.

Mr Kirk says fewer events this quarter and reports that the La Nina weather phenomenon is ending indicates Australia is not in a recurring pattern of extreme weather events.

Meanwhile, CFO Adrian Diggelmann has resigned after six years and Mr Kirk expects to announce a successor in the next few weeks.