Hartford Financial Services Group Inc.'s chief financial officer, David M. Johnson, says the company enjoyed strong underlying performance in the fourth quarter despite a 24% drop in profit.
Hartford reported fourth-quarter net income of $474 million, or $1.53 a share, in a conference call on Thursday. For the year, earnings reached a record $2.3 billion, up 8%.
Among the one-time items that held down earnings in what Mr. Johnson called "a very noisy quarter" were hurricane losses of $85 million, after taxes, primarily from Hurricane Wilma.
Other such items included a $32 million assessment by the Citizen's Property Insurance Corp. of Florida -- the state's so-called insurer of last resort -- $29 million in regulatory settlements, $22 million to end a mutual fund distribution agreement, and $18 million to settle discontinued annuity contracts.
Hartford's chairman, president, and chief executive officer, Ramani Ayer, echoed several other insurance executives in saying his company is revising its catastrophe models to better estimate losses due to storm surges and multiple storms in one region.
On the plus side, the company said, it is expanding its operations in Japan, which had $26.1 billion of assets under management at yearend, up 14% from the year earlier.
The retirement-planning business grew 31%, with fourth-quarter sales and deposits of $1.1 billion.
Retail mutual fund sales rose 39%, to $29 billion.
