I’m a bit like you @timbowls. My first purchases were in the...

I’m a bit like you @timbowls. My first purchases were in the 20s, so I must have started just before you did! But I never stopped topping up, I’ve purchased about 15 times, never sold any at all, and the hundreds I bought in 2008 at high prices are now well and truly diluted by a total holding of 5,400. Like you I’m comfortably in the black now, although of course the gains are not large overall.

I recently topped up again when I heard an analyst seemingly suggest that QBE would achieve 6% yield. It seemed he was talking about 23/24. I was (and still am) surprised by that…it implies a dividend of around 90 cents for the year. That’s a hefty rise on what we’ve been getting. I know investment income is in a highly favourable trend just now, but I would still be surprised if the dividend got that high this year. Still, maybe we can approach that. I’ve forgotten which analyst, it was in one of the videos attached to the ASX 200 Live Data site. He was expressing some reservations about the banks going forward, and essentially said “insurance is a much better financial services bet at the moment, we see QBE yielding 6%”.

I think over the years QBE has become better managed. Frank caused the problems of a decade ago by going too hard too fast with overseas acquisitions. A fair bit of rationalizing followed. We had a couple of CEO’s who I think were quite good, except that they couldn’t stop chasing skirts. They did their best, but were hamstrung by an unwieldy portfolio inherited from the overly exuberant Frank. There also didn’t seem to be much provisioning going on to “smooth out the ride” profits wise. But the current CEO strikes me as appropriately more conservative. My impression is dividend payouts in the better years have been more restrained, improving reserves and (hopefully) allowing us to better deal with the inevitable highly catastrophic years. I have a “sense” that we are now better and more conservatively managed. I can’t really back that up with data and facts, but I do have that sense, and feel more confidence in management than I ever have. Also, the CEO, who hasn’t put a foot wrong so far, is no longer young and attractive enough to be distracted chasing skirts

Here’s hoping for a continuation of the recent trend upwards. May we see more of QBE in this new vein!