Hansard Global published its full-year results this morning, showing a slight rise in pre-tax profits and AuM in what the Group described as 'resilent progress.'
The results for the Isle-of-Man based business show profit before tax of £4.7m, marginally up on £4.6m in 2019.
Latin America proved a significant bright spot for the year, growing by 44% on 2019 levels. This helped to boost new business levels to £159.8m, a rise of 2.5% overall on 2019.
This has been a year of resilient progress given the challenges presented by covid-19."
Fee and commission income was £49.5m compared with £48.5m last year. And AuM remained all but steady at £1.08bn.
Gordon Marr (pictured), Group CEO, said: "This has been a year of resilient progress given the challenges presented by covid-19. After starting the first eight months of our financial year with strong new business growth, the impact of the global pandemic naturally dampened results in the latter part of the year."
"Despite this, new business, assets under administration and profit before tax were all slightly higher than 2019. Given this resilience and our current financial outlook with new business levels for 1Q2021 only slightly behind that of 1Q2020, we are delighted to be in a position to maintain our dividend in line with last year."
During the year the company also implemented the Isle of Man's Group Solvency regime which involved incorporating the Group's non-insurance companies into the calculation of Value of In-Force (VIF) and Own Funds.
VIF represents the present value of expected future shareholder profits less the present value cost of holding capital required to support the in-force business. VIF totalled £148m as at 30 June 2020, up from £140m at 30 June 2019. The equivalent VIF at 30 June 2019 under the revised methodology was £145m.
Japan
A big priority for the Group going into next year is the launch of a Japan-based investment product. Hansard is currently working to establish distribution parners in Japan and plans to launch its locally-licenced investment product in Japan early next year.
As reported by II, Hansard received its regulatory license in the Japan region last year and has been working on the second stages prospectus for its existing Aspire product and the as yet unnamed new product for the lucrative Japanese local financial services market.
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