London investment firm increases profit by 400% in record year

A London investment company has today reported a 399 per cent increase in profit.

Randall & Quilter, which focuses on legacy insurance and program management, announced that its profit after tax rose from £7.8m to £38.9m - a difference of £31.1m.

It also reported a 13 per cent increase in net asset value per share, and a 269 per cent rise in earnings per share.

In a joint statement, Ken Randall, Alan Quilter and William Spiegel commented: “At £40.1m, our pre-tax profit was a group record and almost three times the equivalent result in 2018.

“This was the result of the continued growth in both our program management and legacy businesses as we successfully executed against our strategy and capitalised on the significant opportunities in both segments.

“Our legacy business continued to thrive in 2019 as we completed 16 transactions including executing on two of the largest transactions in R&Q’s history.

“This large capital event [coronavirus] is likely to accelerate the strong secular growth we were already seeing in our two specialist businesses, program management and legacy, as these businesses become a core and growing part of the insurance industry.

“In order to proactively capitalise on the ‘hard market’ in our two business lines, in May 2020, we raised US $100m of new capital.

“In our legacy business we are already witnessing increased opportunities from insurance companies seeking to free-up capital by divesting insurance reserves.

“In our program management business we believe we will be able to forge new origination partnerships as existing insurance capacity may not be able to continue to provide capital support.

“Moreover, due to current market conditions, we are bringing forward our entry into the US Excess & Surplus Lines program management market, a large addressable market in which we do not presently compete.”