One of Bermuda's newest insurance companies, GoshawK Re, has released impressive annual results.

The new Bermuda addition to the GoshawK group appears to have been the main profit generator, while its sister operation in Lloyd's produced surprising pre-tax losses of 12.7 million.

Insurance Holdings plc (GoshawK) announced total profits of ?14.7 million for 2002 compared with a loss of ?5.2 million for 2001.

The Bermuda company set up at the beginning of last year, Goshawk Re Limited, was responsible for ?22.8 million profits.

The Goshawk board have proclaimed this year the "best results in their history" and said the strategic decision to start up a Bermuda company has proved enormously successful for the group formerly consisting of Lloyds syndicate102.

Chairman David Hooker said that reasons for the change were "Lloyd's costs, the costs of regulation and a more realistic capitalisation requirements for writing reinsurance all provided an incentive for us to investigate the insurance business that we could develop in Bermuda."

The Lloyd's part of the operation increased its reserves by ?3.5m relating to contingent cost insurance, a class of business in the US related to the purchase of life policies from policyholders with fatal illnesses.

Goshawk also increased its reserves against reinsurance debtors by an extra ?1.9m to ?4.2m, partly to reflect the recent decline in credit ratings of some of its reinsurers.

Goshawk's gross written premiums almost doubled from ?231m to ?457m the previous year. Earnings per share of 8.4p compared with a loss of 6.9p last time.

A final dividend of 2p gives a total for the year of 3p (1.4p).

Chief executive Chris Fagan said he expected rates in most classes of business written by Goshawk would continue to increase providing a "very attractive environment in which to write both direct insurance and reinsurance".