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Scottish Widows Group 2008 Interim Results

A Scottish Widows product story

Edited by the Insidemoneytalk editorial team Aug 1, 2008

Key Highlights

Scottish Widows Profit before tax from our life, pensions and OEICs business increased by ?38m, or 15%, to ?298m.

The value of Scottish Widows' bancassurance new business premiums increased by 8%.

Overall, IFA Sales decreased by 5%.

Individual pensions sales via the IFA market increased by 12% reflecting positive market response to the introduction of post retirement options to the Retirement Account.

Corporate Pensions sales via the IFA market grew by 32% following the strengthening of our product offer.

Challenging conditions in the external bond market, partly driven by changes in Capital Gains Tax regulations, led to a reduction of 53% in the sale of savings and investment products via the IFA channel.

On an EEV basis, post tax return on embedded value increased further to 11.7%.

During the first half of 2008, ?0.2 billion was repatriated to Group via the regular annual dividend payment, giving total capital repatriation of over ?3.8 billion since the beginning of 2005.

Scottish Widows Investment Partnership Profit before tax was ?20.4m, up 2%, despite a significant reduction in equity market levels.

Archie Kane, chief executive of Scottish Widows, comments: "The results announced today represent another good performance for Scottish Widows within the Group in the first half of the year, with profit before tax increasing by 15% to ?298m.

"We face the prospect of continued uncertainty across global economic activity and the associated challenges that this brings.

Despite this, our vision and objectives remain unchanged and with the progress we've made over recent years we are in a strong position to continue to develop and grow our business.