Mutual Risk Management has posted a first quarter to March 31 net income available to common shareholders of $10,644,000, a 16.4 percent improvement over the same period a year before.

The company has reported a 22 percent increase in operating income, up to a record $11.2 million, reflecting strong sales of Legion accounts and an improvement in the renewal rates.

Legion Insurance and Legion Indemnity are the company's policy issuing subsidiaries, which added 35 new accounts in the first quarter. Legion's renewal rate was 86 percent. Both figures are improvements.

Gross premiums written increased 130 percent to $131.8 million for the first quarter from $57.3 million in the same period the year before, primarily as a result of the number of programme business accounts written. Such business generally involves greater premium volume per unit than corporate risk management business. The expansion also caused premiums earned to increase 53 percent to $18 million.

The programme business segment saw very strong growth, with fee income increasing 122 percent, while fee income in the corporate risk management portion showed a nine percent decline.

But chairman and CEO Robert Mulderig together with president John Kessock Jr.

confirmed that return on equity continued to meet company expectations for the quarter at 20.2 percent.

Programme business is the company's fastest growing segment, involving the company replacing traditional insurers and acting as a conduit between producers of specialty books of business and reinsurers wishing to write that business.

The specialty brokerage business group provides access to alternative risk transfer insurers and reinsurers in Bermuda and Europe. Specialty brokerage produced $1.6 million of total fee income, up 11 percent, and representing about seven percent of total fee income for the first quarter.

Renewal rates were 82 percent, compared to 87 percent in the comparative period. Profit margins decreased from 46 percent to 40 percent, mainly as a result of the company's acquisition of all of the minority interests in one of the businesses in the second quarter of last year.