By Michael Jones

March 6 - (The Insurer) - Fitch Ratings has affirmed SiriusPoint’s credit ratings and revised its outlook from stable to positive on the back of significant underwriting improvement in 2024 and 2023.

The rating agency affirmed SiriusPoint’s ‘BBB long-term issuer default rating, its senior debt rating of ‘BBB-minus’ and its insurer financial strength rating of A-minus (Strong).

Fitch said the positive outlook reflected significant underwriting improvement in 2024 and 2023. It said this was a result of the repositioning of its (re)insurance portfolio and existing non-core lines to improve profitability and reduce overall volatility.

It pointed towards SiriusPoint’s full-year core combined ratios of 91.0% and 89.1% in 2024 and 2023, which was an improvement on the 101.6% figure in 2022.

“Fitch anticipates the favorable underwriting results to continue while the company expects to grow its business, particularly in primary insurance”, Fitch said.

The rating agency estimated that SiriusPoint would shoulder first-quarter 2025 pre-tax net losses of approximately $60 million to $70 million in relation to the California wildfires, which Fitch said was within rating expectations.

SiriusPoint’s credit rating were also said to reflect its strong financial performance and its moderate business profile.

Fitch also highlighted SiriusPoint’s $1.9 billion in shareholders equity at year-end 2024, a 23% decline on the 2023 year-end. It said this drop was driven by $0.8 billion of common shares repurchased with existing capital and retired in connection with the buyout of CM Bermuda Limited.

Last month, SiriusPoint closed its repurchase of all its common shares and warrants held by CM Bermuda Limited for $733 million. It also competed a secondary offering of 4,106,631 common shares by entities associated with Daniel Loeb.