Hiscox announces $300m share buyback as it improves COR for FY25

Specialist insurer Hiscox has posted an undiscounted combined operating ratio (COR) of 87.8% in its financial results for the year ended 2025.

This COR represents the insurance group’s best result for a decade and a year-on-year improvement from 89.2% in the previous period.

Insurance contract written premium also increased by 5.9% to reach $4.97bn, up from $4.70bn in 2024.

As part of the positive results announcement, the insurer announced a share buyback of $300m at 6.5p each to return additional capital to shareholders, with the programme commencing today.

Investment bank Peel Hunt, which is working with Hiscox to manage the buyback, said: “As the rate cycle softens in wholesale excess capital should build, while retail will likely sustain premium growth and improve margins.”

Aki Hussain, group chief executive at Hiscox, explained: “2025 was a pivotal year for Hiscox as we delivered another strong performance and made excellent progress in executing our growth and change strategy.

“In Hiscox Retail, we have achieved multi year growth and margin expansion through new products, deeper distribution, the deployment of new technologies and executive of our change programme.

“Our retail markets present a large and attractive opportunity with a long runway of growth, on which we are executing at pace.

“We are a leading pure-play specialty insurer with a diverse and balanced business, uniquely positioned to seize the opportunities in front of us and deliver value to our shareholders.”

Headroom for growth

Speaking to Insurance Times this morning, Hiscox chief underwriting officer Joanne Musselle noted that Hiscox’s success had been driven by an early adopter attitude to technology, as well as the specialist nature of the business.

She explained: “We’re a specialty underwriter and are really proud of that, because that means we’re specialist across the underwriting value chain, from risk selection right through to claims management, and really understand the sector that we play in.

“We’ve also been a heavy investor in technology for many years and we have the ambition to do much more.

“We’re a growing business and what we are looking to do is free up our humans to focus on that creativity – what AI is doing for us is allowing us to make quicker decisions, but that human specialism, judgment and creativity is something that squarely lives with us.”

Musselle was also optimistic on the headroom for growth in Hiscox’s retail sector, noting that many of its specialisms were adapting to and providing insurance products for new and expanding sectors.

She added: “In our retails markets particularly, we still have relatively low market shares and a lot of the customers, particularly the SMEs, are buying insurance for the first time.

“That means there’s a significant, growing market for us to go at and those emerging risks obviously provide an opportunity to provide solutions – the risks of tomorrow will be quite different so it’s not just about going after business that’s already in existence, but making new markets, which is very exciting.”

As a result of these structural factors, Musselle noted that the Hiscox “outlook is strong” with a guide of 8% growth in insurance contract written premium for FY2026.