29th Aug 2014 11:54
LONDON (Alliance News) - Chesnara PLC Friday reported a 26% increase in first half pretax profit, driven by the performance of its operations in the UK and by Swedish life assurance company Movestic Livförsäkringar AB.
In a statement, Chesnara said it made a GBP27.4 million pretax profit in the six months ended June 30, compared with GBP21.8 million in the corresponding period last year. Pretax profit from its UK operations, comprising Countrywide Assured PLC, Save & Prosper Insurance Ltd, and Protection Life Co Ltd, increased to GBP28.4 million from GBP22.5 million, while pretax profit attributable to Movestic rose to GBP1.8 million from GBP504,000.
While Chesnara is primarily a closed-book operation, focused on generating surplus and cash from existing in-force life-insurance books, Movestic is open to new business. Chesnara notes that Movestic is the only part of the group currently writing material levels of new business.
Net cash generation, a measure of how much distributable cash Chesnara's subsidiaries generate, increased to GBP15.6 million from GBP9.9 million.
European Embedded Value earnings net of tax, a measure designed to show the longer-term nature of Chesnara's insurance and investment contracts, increased to GBP47.3 million from GBP35.4 million.
Chesnara also said it is continuing the search for "value adding" acquisition opportunities, following the purchase of Direct Line Life Insurance Co Ltd, now known as Protection Life Co, in November 2013.
Chesnara increased its interim dividend to 6.42 pence per share from 6.25 pence last year.
Chesnara shares were Friday quoted up 1.9% at 330.48p.
By Samuel Agini; [email protected]; @samuelagini
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