Standard and Poor's raises Warba Insurance financial rating

The stable outlook indicates Warba's financial profile could further improve over the next two years.

Standard & Poor's explained in their issued report that Warba Insurance's ratings have been raised to 'BBB', making remarkable progress and maintaining a lead market share of 11% amongst more than 30 licensed insurance providers in Kuwait.

With noticeable improvement in its operating performance, it has been predicted that Warba Insurance will maintain its strong financial and business profiles supported by strong risk-based capital.

Additionally, Standard & Poor's stated in its report that the strong underwriting performance reflects the significant steps Warba Insurance has taken to strengthen its investment risk controls and risk appetite, thus materially reducing its still-high equity holdings, improving capitalization to strong and reducing the potential volatility of its capital.

The steps consisted of distinguished management performance through expanding its client base and enhancing its market share, strong underwriting performance, which led to a strong competitive position, and finally by its competitive attitude by strengthening its capitalization.

The report also reflects the strong cover that liquid assets to net technical reserves worth 5.6 times, and and net claims reserves are covered by cash deposits by 2.8 times.

Commenting on S&P's decision, Mr. Tawfiq S. Al Bahar, Warba Insurance Co.'s Managing Director, said, "The report is a great endorsement of our excellent management team, its strong leadership and our dedicated work force, as well as our risk management systems and controls. It also confirms that our strategy of focusing on providing the best and most dependable services is working, and is delivering the results we had planned. The last two years have seen us put Warba Insurance Co. on a solid growth trajectorate, and I believe we are now well positioned for continued future growth. We have strengthened our balance sheet significantly, made good progress to meet challenges in a difficult market, delivered good results by concentrating on our core areas of Consumer and Corporate insurance products, and have greatly enhanced our levels of customer service. Our challenge now is to maintain our focus as we continue our development."