ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Credit Rating Agency (PACRA) has reaffirmed its highest insurer financial strength rating for The United Insurance Company of Pakistan Limited, signaling continued confidence in the 66-year-old non-life insurer.
According to Pakistan Credit Rating Agency Limited, PACRA maintained its AA-plus (IFS) rating with a stable outlook for United Insurance, unchanged from the last review in September 2025. An insurer financial strength rating, or IFS rating, measures a company's ability to pay claims to policyholders and serves as the primary benchmark used by corporate clients and reinsurers when selecting an insurance partner.
The reaffirmation comes against a challenging backdrop for the insurance industry. Sector-wide gross premium written, which represents the total value of insurance policies sold before any reinsurance deductions, reached approximately Rs170 billion in the first nine months of 2025, slightly below the Rs171 billion recorded in the same period of 2024. More notably, industry underwriting profits, or earnings generated purely from insurance operations before investment income, fell by about 50 percent to Rs4.8 billion over the same period, down from Rs9.6 billion a year earlier.
PACRA noted that a significant portion of the earnings decline was due to a one-off accounting reversal of an investment gain recognized in the previous year, rather than a structural deterioration in the business.
On a positive note, the company's equity base expanded to Rs8.4 billion from Rs6.4 billion, strengthening its capital buffer. The net insurance premium, the premium retained after ceding a portion to reinsurance partners, held broadly stable at Rs6.3 billion. PACRA highlighted the company's conservative investment portfolio, anchored in government securities and bank deposits, and its access to a robust panel of international reinsurers as key credit supports.
United Insurance has plans to diversify into real estate and life insurance. Timely and successful execution of these expansion plans will be essential to sustaining the current rating.