Endurance Specialty Holdings Ltd’s fourth-quarter profit soared by nearly 20 per cent as the insurer and reinsurer benefited from its expanding underwriting platform.

The company, headquartered in Waterloo House on Pitts Bay Road, said net income was $91.4 million for the last three months of last year, or $1.36 per share, compared to $76.4 million, or $1.70 per share for the corresponding period of 2014.

Endurance acquired Montpelier Re last June and expenses related to the deal — amounting to $8.1 million in the fourth quarter adding to the $64 million — hit full-year earnings.

Full-year net income was $311.3 million compared to $315.7 million in 2014.

Net investment income for 2015 was $113.8 million, a decrease of $17.7 million from 2014.

John Charman, Endurance’s chairman and chief executive officer, commented, “2015 marked another year of excellent strategic and financial progress in the transformation of Endurance into a leading global specialty insurance and reinsurance carrier. Last year, we continued the strong organic expansion of our global underwriting capabilities that we began in 2013 by continuing to expand our underwriting expertise, our products and our geographies.

“We also completed the successful acquisition and smooth integration of Montpelier. Financially, our results were excellent, with a full-year operating ROE [return on equity] of 12 per cent, excluding expenses related to the acquisition and integration of Montpelier, and a full-year combined ratio of 82.9 per cent.

“Our greatly expanded global underwriting capabilities and substantially improved market relevance enabled our businesses to selectively grow our gross written premiums 14.7 per cent to $3.3 billion in 2015 despite the significant headwinds we faced from an increasingly competitive global marketplace.

“The actions we have taken over the last three years to increase our scale, expand our underwriting capabilities and improve our market presence globally have prepared us extremely well for the competitive conditions we face.

“We are uniquely positioned to continue generating strong shareholder value as we reap the benefits of our transformation and we further leverage the investments we have made in our underwriting and risk management capabilities.”