National Company for Cooperative Insurance (NCCI), Saudi Arabia's largest insurer by market value, made a fourth-quarter profit of 35.7 million riyals ($9.5 million), down 65 percent.

NCCI profit in all of last year rose 12.2 percent to 525 million riyals, the company said in a statement on the Saudi bourse Web site. It did not give fourth quarter data which Reuters calculated from previous financial statements.

NCCI made a profit of 101.4 million riyals in the fourth quarter of 2006.

NCCI faced rising competition last year from more than a dozen new insurance companies, which the kingdom licensed. - Reuters