Dear friend,

The numbers keep rolling in and the cash keeps stacking up.

Reinsurance numbers are slippery, wriggly little things.

This time of year my job is a bit like being forced to stare at one of those magic eye pictures – you gawp and gaze until you go cross-eyed and then suddenly it all comes into place.

The sea of dots and blobs becomes a merry splashing dolphin or a cheeky chimp.

And then you get distracted and the hidden picture submerges itself back into a blurred and smudged ocean of colour never to re-emerge!

So what numbers have wriggled out of the morass of wriggly maggots, pupated, hatched and flown around my office this week?

Here’s a good one:

How about the casualty reinsurance combined ratio that without a 12-point boost from back year releases would have been nearly 107%?

Worse losses and lower premiums were blamed! No kidding!

Why not see if you can squint and spot this one in the maelstrom of digits?

Oh the fun and games of it all.

A million here and a million there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money