Sponsored Statement: A positive future

Africa Re which recently celebrated its 40^th anniversary was set up in 1976. The corporation currently has a total of 157 shareholders namely 41African states, the African Development Bank (AFDB) , 111 insurance and reinsurance companies across Africa and 4 non- African investors (IRB - Brazil Re – a leading Brazilian reinsurer, Proparco – branch of the Agence Française de Développement, Axa and Fairfax Financial Holding Company)

Africa Re is recently upgraded to A Excellent, rating by AM Best from A- which was enjoyed for the last years, and is A- rated by S&P since 2009.

African reinsurance corporation (Africa Re), the leading pan- African reinsurance group has shown resilience in its core business by achieving a net underwriting profit of US$ 78.7 million in 2015, up by 14.6% from the US$ 68.6 million of the previous year. The combined ratio stood at 86.7%, the lowest of the last decade. This excellent performance is the combined result of the corporation’s discipline underwriting approach which started some years back and a clement year in terms of natural catastrophes and pick claims.

The corporation recorded a gross written premium of US$ 689.3 million against US$ 717.5 million the previous year, representing a 4% decrease. Although the premium written in local currencies grew averagely by 13.6% in all the production centers across the African continent the impact of a stronger US dollar the presentation currency against the operating currencies negatively impacted the gross written premium by US$ 95.2 million.

It is worth noting that Africa Re is the only reinsurer from the African continent and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in the top 40 of global reinsurance groups. The corporation was listed among the top 40 global reinsurance group in 2012 and was ranked 40^th from 2012 to 2014.