Aegon has announced underlying earnings before tax in the UK increased by £3m to £23m in the 12 months to the third quarter of this year, driven by higher equity markets.
In its Q3 results, published today (7 November), Aegon revealed earnings from the life side of the business declined 11 per cent to £17m, but earnings from pensions increased to £6m from £2m in Q3 2012.
Earnings from life decreased in the last 12 months from £19m to £17m.
Aegon said earnings benefited from the “favourable impact” of higher equity markets compared to the third quarter of 2012, as well as a one-time gain of £2m.
This was partly offset by expenses related to creating a digital capability for the non-advised client group in order to facilitate the upgrade to the platform.
Last year, Aegon announced it intended to extend its investment in technology platforms as part of a drive to increase direct relationships with clients in the coming years
In addition, earnings were impacted by £4m from “adverse persistency”. Persistency has started to improve, but is still expected to have an impact in the fourth quarter of 2013, Aegon said.
Adrian Grace, chief executive of Aegon UK, said the insurer was now seeing the Retail Distribution Review strategy and new initiatives put in place beginning to pay off.
He said: “We look forward to working with advisers to help them service all of their clients in a post-RDR world.
“We have the fastest growing platform in the market and it was fantastic to see ARC break through the £1bn assets under management in early October.
“The platform service centre has now moved to our head office in Edinburgh and in the third quarter we also announced bold plans to recruit 100 new staff to help with this rapid growth.
“Our business has gone through dynamic change in a very short period of time to become the modern post-RDR business it needs to be. We’ve embraced technology and innovation along the way and this is where we’re really starting to see results.
“Our transformation is not complete and we’re already looking forward to next year when we will roll out the rest of our technology based proposition for non-advised customers and to our existing customers through their advisers.”
