Insurers expected to have weathered the Brexit vote storm
Insurers are expected to reveal they have navigated referendum uncertainty just fine when they announce their half-year results next week.
Pensions, investments and insurance giant Standard Life will reveal how it has performed in the first six months of 2016 on Tuesday, as will Legal & General. Meanwhile, results are due from Prudential on Wednesday and from Hastings on Thursday.
Analysts predict Standard Life is gearing up to announce operating profits before tax of £314m, up eight per cent compared with the £290m operating profits from continuing operations announced last year, and assets under administration of £313.9bn, an increased of four per cent from £302.1bn in its half-year results for 2015.
Meanwhile, Legal & General is forecast to report profits before tax attributable to equity holders of £771m for its first half of 2016, up 15 per cent compared with £672m reported the same time last year.
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Banks were not the only ones given a hard time by June's Brexit vote, with many insurers and investors also witnessing their share price crumble.
Meanwhile, volatility in the markets both before and after the vote has made raking in investment income tricky.
However, Legal & General, which recently appointed former government asset management boss Sir John Kingman as its new chairman, has already thrown its hat into the ring over the vote, revealing in a recent statement: "We undertook a number of derisking actions in respect of our asset portfolios, including the traded equities held within our shareholder funds, before the referendum to mitigate our balance sheet against the downside risk of a Leave vote."
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Next week's results follow on from a set of largely good earnings last week. Aviva, which announced prior preparation meant the Brexit vote "will have no significant operational impact on the company" on 24 June, revealed a 13 per cent boost to operating profits last Thursday.
And, while pre-tax profits were down at RSA, the figures were skewed by a boost from a disposal in 2015 and underlying operating profit grew by 20 per cent.