Lower operating costs drive down expense ratios in Q3

As growing loss ratios continued to pressure underwriting margins,
third quarter results so far have revealed that (re)insurers turned
to expense management to improve their results, while reduced
variable compensation also came to the rescue.
Expense ratios for the three months to 30 September decreased at
nearly every company in our coverage universe that has reported so
far.
On a simple average basis, the metric dropped by 2.5 percentage
points year-on-year.
The biggest improvement was at Val