Liberty Mutual Insurance ended 2015 in the black, but higher losses from catastrophes and other hits hurt its performance during the year.

Parent Liberty Mutual Holding Co. booked $411 million in net income in Q4, a nearly 26 percent drop over $553 million booked during the same period in 2014. Full-year net income for 2015 came in at $514 million, a 71.7 percent plunge from $1.8 billion in net income in 2014.

Liberty Mutual’s combined ratio for the 2015 fourth quarter came in at 95.7, 1.5 points higher than in Q4 2014. For the full year, the insurer produced a still-healthy 97.8, unchanged over 2014.

Liberty Mutual Chairman and CEO David Long blamed energy-related losses as well as foreign exchange losses and increased catastrophe costs for the final results.

Liberty Mutual noted in its earnings announcement that it has taken a number of steps to tweak how it operates, in order to foster new global growth. For example, the insurer disclosed in February that it will combine its Personal Insurance and Liberty International strategic business units into a new division dubbed Global Consumer Markets. The idea behind this: to combine “strong and scalable” U.S. personal lines capabilities along with “local expertise” in growing markets outside of the U.S., the insurer said.

Here are highlights of Liberty Mutual’s Q4 and full-year 2015 results:

• Net written premium for Q4 came in at more than $8.1 billion, down $115 million, or 1.4 percent from Q4 2014.
• Net written premium for all of 2015 hit $34.5 billion, an increase of $201 million, or 0.6 percent over 2014.
• Catastrophe losses for Q4 2015 are booked at $289 million versus $154 million in the 2014 fourth quarter.
• Full year, 2015 catastrophe losses surpassed $1.8 billion versus $1.6 billion in catastrophe losses for 2014. Liberty Mutual dealt with a number of events in 2015 including severe storms in the U.S., U.K. and Australia, Cyclone Niklas, and also an earthquake and floods in Chile.

Source: Liberty Mutual