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28 Mondial Assistance Annual Report 2008
Financial results
Review of Operations
For the year 2008
In 2008, Mondial Assistance reached
its targets by achieving 1.6 billion euros
gross turnover with a combined ratio
below 95%. This good result was possible
thanks to the insurance business whose
written premiums increased by +8.1%
compared to last year, along with stable
service revenues.
48% of the revenues come from travel
insurance products, such as trip cancella-
tion, medical costs coverage and medical
assistance. This line of business had a
growth of +2.8% in 2008 with a clear trend
to internet online business through travel
agents and airlines companies.
The business contributing to the half of
the total growth was automotive. Repre-
senting 39% of the total group revenues,
with mainly roadside assistance prod-
ucts, the line of business automotive
had a growth of +8.1%.
The remaining part of the business is
split between the third line of business
health and lifecare services, representing
8% of the total revenues, and the fourth
one property & others with 5% revenue
share. The corresponding products
sold mainly on the fi nance market had
respectively turnover increases of +7.1%
and +18.7%.
Geographically, the Americas and EMEA
regions were the main contributors
to the growth of revenues in volume,
respectively with +18.6% and +4.1%,
followed by Asia Pacifi c with +7.9%.
The strong growth, mainly coming
from France, Brazil, Italy and the USA,
was heavily impacted by -40.7 million
euros resulting from important foreign
exchange rates fl uctuations during the
year 2008, the major impacts being with
the British pound, the US dollar and the
Australian dollar.
Turnover (Premiums and Service Revenue)
Compared to last year, the claims ratio
improved by 1.4% point from 58.4% to
57.8%. This comes from both a slight
improvement of the current year claims
ratio and also a better run-off from previ-
ous year claims.
Globally the commission ratio gross of
reinsurance moved from 20.7% in 2007
to 20.5% in 2008, which is very stable
as during last years and mostly driven by
the insurance business ratio of 23.9%.
In addition to those improvements, the
effi cient control of the costs has to be
emphasized as the general expenses
increased by only +5.1% to 565.2 million
euros and the general expenses ratio
decreased from 37% in 2007 to 36%
in 2008. In parallel, Headcounts increased
by +4.9% and full time equivalent
increased by +6.1%.
As a consequence of the above men-
tioned improvement, the combined ratio,
as a mix of insurance and service busi-
nesses, improved to 94.9%.
Claims and expenses
At December 31st, 2008, the Group’s
financial investments amounted to
581.6 million euros, which represent
40.5% of the total assets, compared to
562.4 million euros and 41% in 2007.
In 2008 there were 45 million euros less
long term bank deposits than in 2007,
especially in UK, and 52.3 million euros
more securities available for sale, mainly
coming from more cash invested in
money market mutual funds.
The investments and fi nancial results
decreased by -9.4 million euros in 2008
to 24.1 million euros, thereof -7.6 million
euros coming from exchange rates
result especially on contracts in British
pound, US dollar, Canadian dollar and
euro against Swiss franc. Furthermore,
the result from investments was lower
than in 2007 due to the economic crisis
and the impairment of some bonds.
Investments and fi nancial results