Date: Wednesday 18 Mar 2015
LONDON (ShareCast) - UK investment manager Phoenix Group Holdings reported a jump in full year pretax profit on the back of strong performance of its managed funds business.
Pretax profit increased to £336m from £268m as revenue, net of reinsurance payable, rose to £5.32bn from £4.22bn and operating expenses increased to £4.71bn from £3.80bn.
As such, operating profit before adjusting items grew to £483m from £439m last year, which more than offset a fall in that reported by the Ignis operations sold to Standard Life last year.
Phoenix noted that operating profit increased due to "one-off benefits generated from system and modelling improvements of £165m from £98m in 2013 and the positive impact of assumption changes compared to the prior year".
The company also said that it is preparing for new rules known as Solvency II that will govern insurers across the European Union.
"All of this leaves the group in a sound financial position as we transition to Solvency II, enabling us to focus our efforts on seeking an investment grade rating and growing Phoenix through closed life acquisitions, thereby delivering more value to both customers and shareholders," said the company.
The company is paying out a final dividend for 2014 of 26.7p per share. It also announced that chairman Howard Davies will be stepping down at the end of August this year as he heads of to the Royal Bank of Scotland as chairman.
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