General insurers achieved growth in premiums over the past year but not enough to deliver underwriting profits.Eight of 17 insurers surveyed by KPMG for its latest General Insurance Survey reported combined ratios of more than 100 per cent on their Australian operations (the combined ratio calculates claims plus underwriting expenses as a percentage of premium income, with a combined ratio over 100 per cent indicating an underwriting loss).Among those that suffered the biggest underwriting losses were Chubb Insurance, which had a combined ratio of 115 per cent for the year to December, Wesfarmers Insurance, which had a combined ratio of 111 per cent for the year to June, and Zurich Australian Insurance, which had a combined ratio of 108 per cent for the year to December.Among those that reported underwriting profits, only CommInsure and Hollard improved their combined ratios.The industry recorded this dismal underwriting performance despite premium increases for a number of personal and commercial products.KPMG insurance partner Ian Moyser said insurers had achieved premium growth of 8.3 per cent over the past year but claims incurred had increased by 20 per cent. During the year to June, insurers paid out A$703 million on claims for the Melbourne storms last December, $125 million for the Queensland floods in January and $108 million for the floods in New South Wales and in Victoria in February and March.Moyser said claims for severe weather events were not as bad as those of the two previous years, but insurers were not able to pass as many of the claims on to reinsurers as they had in the earlier years.The industry's aggregate underwriting loss was $438 million. However, after taking investment returns into account, the aggregate profit on Australian operations was $2.5 billion - down 18.5 per cent on the previous year.