Hot on the heels of the inaugural Half Yearly General Insurance Bulletin covering the period to June last year, the prudential regulator has just released its Quarterly General Insurance Performance report covering until last December.

With barely a week between the release of the two statistical publications, it now seems clear why it was necessary to appoint a manager of statistics at the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA).

The job has gone to Steve Davies, who spent 10 years at CSIRO as an applied statistical scientist before joining APRA in 1999.

APRA’s latest report indicated the total general insurance industry’s net premium for the December quarter was 5.4% higher than for the corresponding quarter in 2004.

Net premium revenue for the year ended December 31 was $21.2 billion, up 2.1% on the previous year. APRA says direct insurers wrote $19.6 billion (92.4%), up 2.9% on the previous 12 months.

The report says net profit after tax for the year was $5.3 billion and return on equity was 21.5%, down from 23.3% previously. Direct insurers accounted for $4.6 billion (88%) of industry profit.

Net incurred claims for the year amounted to $12.7 billion, up 0.5% on the previous year, and claims for the quarter were up 11.8% on the December 2004 quarter.