Hiscox Ltd – Trading Statement - 10.12.07

Hiscox Ltd has today issued a trading statement for the 11 months to 30 November 2007.

Overview

Gross premium income to the end of November has increased 10% to £1,142.1 million (2006: £1,038.0 million).

Trading has been good with favourable rating, albeit becoming more competitive. After Hurricane Kyrill in January and UK floods in the summer, Mother Nature has since been kind to us and the hurricanes and typhoons have avoided the heavily insured areas of the world.

The full year result should be better than last year's record.

Capital Management

The board has agreed to a £100 million capital management programme. In
September we commenced a £50 million share buy-back. To date £11.3 million has been spent to acquire 4,365,305 shares at an average price of 259.4p per share. A further £50 million will be spent repaying debt.

The Sub-prime Crisis

We have negligible exposure in our investments to sub-prime bonds. In our
underwriting, we have a very modest and well reserved exposure to some small financial services companies in the US. We do not insure major financial institutions for such risks.

The investment return this year is on track to exceed last year's total of £78.5
million.

The Future

The world insurance market is highly competitive with continued downward
pressure on rates, particularly on larger risks. Smaller risks, the core of our
retail strategy, are seeing slightly less competition and we have gently
increased rates in the UK household account.

Robert Hiscox said:
'This downward part of the insurance cycle is what our strategy is designed to
combat. We will continue to build the profitable stable retail accounts
worldwide to counteract the necessary reduction in the catastrophe and
big-ticket accounts.'