HASTINGS GROUP HOLDINGS PLC (Reuters) - UK insurer Hastings Group Holdings Plc (>> Hastings Group Hldg PLC) reported an increase of about 19 percent in operating profit for the first nine months of the year, driven by a rise in gross written premiums.
Hastings, which offers insurance for private cars, homes, motorbikes and vans as well as premium financing and ancillary products, said operating profit rose to 93.8 million pounds for the nine months ended Sept. 30 from 79 million pounds a year earlier.
Gross written premiums rose 26 percent to 454.3 million pounds, Hastings said on Wednesday in its first trading update after listing on the London Stock Exchange last month.
"I think its important that in our early public life, we continue to give investors and potential investors more information ... because they don't know us very well," Chief Executive Gary Hoffman said.
The Financial Conduct Authority said in November last year that companies no longer needed to issue first- and third- quarter financial reports.
Hastings said it was confident it would perform in line with or ahead of the targets set during its initial public offering.
The targets included reaching 2.5 million live customer policies by the end of 2017 and paying a dividend of between 50 percent and 60 percent of earnings.
Hoffman said Hastings would declare a dividend along with its full-year results. He did not disclose the company's short-term profit targets.
The total number of live policies rose to 1.97 million as at Sept. 30 from 1.65 million a year earlier, the insurer said.
Net revenue rose 19 percent to 350.2 million pounds.
Hastings said its market share of private car insurance policies in the UK had risen to 5.7 percent as at the end of September from 4.9 percent a year earlier.
The company said it was well prepared for the new European capital rules for insurers that would come into effect in January 2016.
With a market capitalisation of 1.1 billion pounds, the company would be part of the FTSE Midcap Index <.FTMC>, Hoffman said.
Hoffman said a company comprising Goldman Sachs' (>> Goldman Sachs Group Inc) merchant banking division, certain founders and members of management remained its largest shareholder.
Hastings' stock, which had risen about 3 percent since it listed on Oct. 12, was up 1.64 percent at 0937 GMT and trading at 170 pence, its debut price.
(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by Anupama Dwivedi)
By Noor Zainab Hussain
