Australian Insurance Giant AMP, owners of the UK brands Henderson Global Investors, Pearl Assurance, NPI, London Life, Towry Law and the website Ample posted losses last week for UK insurance related business to the tune of £887m. They say that losses reflect the impact caused by "re-structuring and write-offs". A knock on effect is that they are seeking permission form the UK regulator to separate the UK businesses, it is assumed for ease of potential sale.
Our view
We, along with many others in the finance industry are not surprised with these figures. AMP is a giant and it would appear that their strategy is to split the UK and Australian operations for stockmarket listing purposes. This may only be for ease of sale rather than economies of scale. Certain sections of their business such as pensions company NPI have been closed to new business and others such as Pearl have delivered poor, if any, bonuses for with profits policyhholders.
Our advice is simple - if you have investments with any of these companies take advice now.
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