It’s been a difficult market over the last six months, but Royal London has managed to maintain its record trading position from 2017.
The firm has this morning revealed its trading results for the first half of the year amid what CEO Phil Loney labelled “sluggish economic growth” providing a “challenging backdrop for pension and investment companies.” The firm managed to enjoy a leap in EEV pre-tax profit, up 9% to £358 million, leading to an operating profit of £187 million for the first six months of the year.
Its life and pension sales were actually down by £1 million – slipping from £6,078 million last year to £6,077 million this time around, but its new business margin was maintained at 1.8%. Intermediary UK Protection new business sales jumped by 14% to £383 million (HY 2017: £337 million) prompted by what the firm called “increased adviser confidence in our propositions as a result of improved new business processes, strong and effective underwriting and a commitment to innovation.” Market share was also up to 11.2% from 11.1% at the end of December.
Meanwhile, the firm’s funds under management leapt by £3 billion – from £114 billion as of December 2017 to £117 billion as of June 2018.
In addition, Loney took the opportunity to urge the Government to save the proposed ‘pensions dashboard’ project.
“The UK pensions system is highly fragmented and auto enrolment will add further to the number of people with pensions scattered across multiple schemes and providers,” he said. “In many other countries citizens can see all of their pensions – state, workplace and private – all in one place, and there is no reason why UK citizens should not be able to do so. The industry has already shown its commitment by spending time and money preparing a prototype dashboard.
“We need Government to take a lead, both in ensuring that state and public sector pension data is available and also in requiring all pension schemes and providers to supply data. Only the Government can do this. It is time to put the consumer first and press ahead with the dashboard project, and we stand ready to work with the Government to drive this project forward.”
