Sampo Balances Underwriting Quality With Growth and We Believe the Former Takes Precedent
Sampo is an efficiently run Nordics-based personal lines insurer that tends to focus on improving its underwriting quality year on year by holding on to customers for longer and therefore paying less in acquisition costs. The digitalization of its operations and extraction of expenses, scale, and negotiation power with its partners have also helped. Sampo has a long-term track record of increasing its prices ahead of the prevailing rate of inflation. The business tends to invest a little under EUR 100 million a year to achieve these goals. We think the savings the company has generated from these investments have more than covered their costs and more than covered the existing returns the business has generated. In other words, we believe these investments have been value-accretive.