LONDON - Britain's biggest insurer, Aviva announced on Thursday that 9-month sales increased by 10 percent, but these were at the bottom end of expectations. However, the strong growth on the European mainland compensated for the 3 percent fall in business in Britain.
Aviva, which trades as Norwich Union in the UK said that life and pensions sales increased by 10 percent to £16.26 billion up from £14.7 billion reported at the same time last year. This compared quite favorably with analysts' predictions of £16.16 billion and £16.5 billion.
The profits were forecast to be between £568 million and £590 million, but these actually hit £575 million rising by 13 percent from the £505 million reported at the same time last year.
However there was a fall in UK life and pension sales from £6.77 billion to £6.58 billion, but chief executive Richard Harvey was confident that the new pensions rules that come into effect on April 6,2006 will boost sales substantially.
"Aviva's international performance continues to offset a competitive UK market environment," Harvey said. "In the UK we have seen our third consecutive quarter of sales growth and momentum is building for the rest of the year and into 2006."
He also revealed that the group was still mulling on distributing the surplus assets from CGNU Life and Commercial Union Life Assurance Company to policyholders and shareholders. These are called as Orphan assets and no policyholder has a direct claim on them.
Posted
on : Mon, 31 Oct 2005 06:45 GMT | Insurance News
By : Rob Davis
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