LONDON (Bloomberg) - Catlin Group Ltd., owner of the largest insurance unit at Lloyd's of London, said first-quarter sales rose nine percent as revenue from property insurance gained.

Gross written premiums in the three months to March 31 climbed to $1.27 billion from $1.17 billion a year earlier, Hamilton, Bermuda-based Catlin said in a statement. Property insurance sales climbed 52 percent to $120 million.

Catlin estimated in March that losses from the earthquake in Chile in February would be about $140 million, based on an overall market loss of $6 billion. Lloyd's of London insurers may have used up more than half of their annual budget for natural catastrophes paying claims for the Chilean earthquake and Windstorm Xynthia, according to Christopher Hitchings, a London-based analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.

Losses from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, which exploded in the Gulf of Mexico last month, will be about $40 million, Catlin said.

Deepwater Horizon and the Chilean earthquake "are within Catlin's planning margins, although further exceptional losses during 2010 will likely have an impact on the group's financial results for the year", CEO Stephen Catlin said in the statement.