AIA reports record first half results

Embedded value (EV) increased 11 per cent to $27.394 billion and annualised new premium (ANP) for the period rose 23 per cent to $1.094 billion. VONB margin rose 2.3 percentage points to 36 per cent.

Under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), the group reported profit of $1.314 billion for the period, an increase of 24 per cent compared with the same period in the previous year. Operating profit after tax rose 8 per cent to $967 million.

Mark Tucker, AIA’s Group chief executive and president, said: “AIA’s strong performance across all of our key financial performance measures demonstrates the excellent progress we have made in executing our growth strategy. There is much more to come.”

AIA’s record-breaking performance reflects the group’s success across the region in building its Premier Agency sales force and boosting agent productivity, focusing on helping meet the savings and protection needs of its customers, improving customer experience and retention and on developing new and deepening existing relationships with bank partners.

AIA also declared its first dividend since listing, an interim dividend of 11 Hong Kong cents per share.

“We are pleased to declare our first dividend since our listing last October – an interim dividend of 11 Hong Kong cents per share. This dividend payment reflects the strong cash flow inherent in AIA’s business,” said Tucker. “We are confident in our ability to maintain a prudent and progressive dividend, in addition to being able to self-finance our strong new business growth.”

As well as generating record new business, the first half of 2011 saw AIA become a constituent stock in Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng Index, making it one of the city’s blue chip stocks just over 6 months after its record breaking initial public offering.

“AIA is a story of growth in the most dynamic region of the world. Asia has been our home for over ninety years and it remains the most attractive place in the world to do business given the long term economic outlook and demographic trends which fuel the region’s savings and protection needs.

“The scale of our franchise, our financial strength, our motivated staff and agents, our product innovation and pan-regional expertise are some of the competitive strengths we can deploy to create value from this Asian opportunity. We are highly confident about AIA’s ongoing growth in Asia,” said Tucker.

AIA Group Limited and its subsidiaries comprise the largest independent publicly listed pan-Asian life insurance group in the world. It has wholly-owned main operating subsidiaries or branches in 14 markets in Asia Pacific - Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, China, Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Vietnam, New Zealand, Macau and Brunei and a 26 per cent joint venture shareholding in India.

The business that is now AIA was first established in Shanghai over 90 years ago. It is a market leader in the Asia Pacific region (ex-Japan) based on life insurance premiums and holds leading positions across the majority of its markets. It has total assets of $115.782 billion as of May 31, 2011.

AIA Vietnam officially started operations in Vietnam in February, 2000. Over the last 11 years, AIA Vietnam has been focusing on laying a strong foundation for its sustainable growth through the training and development of its human resources with more than 400 staff and 14,000 agents.

AIA Vietnam in line with the AIA Group continues to have strong performances with growth in annualised new premium (ANP) and total weighted premium income (TWPI) of 40 per cent and 21 per cent respectively for the first half of the year comparing to the same period last year. The VONB margin which is one of key performance measures has also increased by 55 per cent to reach 28.2 per cent for the first half of 2011 showing profitable growth momentum.

Currently, AIA Vietnam serves the holders of about 270,000 policies across the country. Until the end of June 2011, AIA has paid out a total of more than VND670 billion for insurance benefits with nearly 110,000 cases.