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Good morning, everyone. My name is Knut-Arne Alsaker, and I'm the group CFO of Sampo. It's my pleasure to give you an overview of Sampo's first quarter results for 2024. The first quarter saw the most severe Nordic winter weather since 2010, with freezing cold temperatures, heavy snow and windstorms, costing the group around EUR 120 million in total. Despite this, our operational momentum was strong with premium growth of 10% and an improvement in underlying margins. Profit before taxes increased by 29% to EUR 465 million, helped by our resilient underwriting results and strong investment returns.
Let me now dive into a few key points in our Q1 results. At our March Capital Markets Day, we got organic growth at the heart of our ambition to grow operating EPS by more than 7% per annum in '24 through '26. I'm pleased to see that we have made a good start on this with private in the U.K., growing premiums by 7% and 22%, respectively, in Q1. Private benefited from the investments we have made in digital and non-motor products. Premiums grew by 14% in Personal Insurance and by 7% in Property. In the U.K., we continue to see the effect of the price increases we took during the second half of 2023 and an increase in customer count, both in Motor and Home. Putting the severe weather aside, we had a very positive development in underwriting margins.
The underlying group combined ratio which excludes volatile items, improved by 1.1 percentage points year-on-year on positive momentum in both the Nordics and U.K. Claims inflation reduced marginally compared to the fourth quarter in both the Nordics and U.K., while claims frequency, excluding weather claims, continued in line with expectations. Given the solid underlying momentum that we see in the business, we are confident in the trajectory that we see for the rest of the year. As a result, we have narrowed our group combined ratio outlook for 2024, 23%, 25%.
With that, I thank you for your attention.