QBE has announced a record half-year after-tax profit of $491 million, an increase of 43% on the corresponding period last year – and it’s buying up businesses at an increasingly swift rate.

The profit announcement comes a week after QBE acquired UK underwriting firm Minibus Plus, the second offshore acquisition the biggest Australian insurer has made this month (it also acquired the National Farmers business in the US).

But that’s not all. Group GM Business Development Raymond Jones told Sunrise Exchange News yesterday that QBE will acquire between six and 12 businesses by the end of this year.

“Those acquisitions will be relatively small by QBE standards, at around $200 million each,” he said.

Despite QBE now conducting more than 70% of its business offshore, Mr Jones poured cold water on reports that the company could relocate its headquarters overseas.

“We are happy to be located in Australia and be listed on the Australian Stock Exchange,” he said. “There are no plans to relocate overseas at all.”

While it was expected that the recent drop in premiums rates would affect QBE’s results, net earned premium actually increased by 13% to $3.5 billion.

But the insurer did report a greater drop in premium rates than it had expected, with an average 3.6% decline in average premiums worldwide and 6.1% in Australia, compared with forecasts of 3.1% and 3.5% respectively.

Group insurance profit before tax was up 30% to $553 million and was 15.8% of net earned premium, compared with 13.6% for the first half of last year.

CEO Frank O’Halloran says the company was ahead of its key profit targets at the half-year. “This gives us confidence that, subject to unforeseen circumstances, the insurance profit to net earned premium ratio will be in the range of 15-16% for the full year, well above the target of 12.5-13.5% announced at our AGM in April.”