XL Group made a fourth-quarter profit of $228 million, bringing its full-year net income attributable to ordinary shareholders to $1.2 billion.

Excluding the impact of the GreyCastle Life Retro agreements, which relates to a May 2014 sale and purchase agreement with GreyCastle Holdings, XL Group’s figures for the quarter and full year come out at $173 million and $982.1 million respectively.

Year on year, the group’s operating net income dropped from $999.2 million to $705.9 million.

During 2015, XL acquired Catlin Group in a $4.1 billion deal. The integration costs related to the merging of the two companies totalled $156.4 million for the full year.

Mike McGavick, the company’s chief executive officer, said: “Through 2015 XL produced solid results in a tough (re)insurance market while closing a transformative acquisition and successfully launching XL Catlin.

“Our colleagues focused on executing a superior integration process that has thus far exceeded our expectations for both business and talent retention as well as synergy savings.

“Looking to 2016, taking into account the continued pressure from both the (re)insurance and investment markets, we feel we are well positioned to capitalise on our increased market relevance and to find new areas of innovation and opportunity.”

The company’s P&C combined ratio for the quarter was 92.3 per cent, up from 84.5 per cent in the same period a year ago, for the full year it was 92 per cent, compared with 88.2 per cent for 2014.

XL Group achieved gross written premiums in its property and casualty operations of $10.6 billion for the year, up from $7.76 billion in 2014.

The company has a market capitalisation of $10.6 billion. On the New York Stock Exchange yesterday its shares edged down 0.22 per cent to close at $35.62.

Xl Group’s operating net income, expressed per share, for the full year on a fully diluted basis, was $2.43. This compares with $3.68 in 2014.

The company’s results for 2015 include those of Catlin Group from May 1.