Hansard Global, the specialist long-term savings provider, reported a 35.4% fall in new business sales from £173m to £120.5m, in its full-year results for the year ended 30 June 2022 (FY 2022).

Assets under administration also fell, year on year, by just shy of 11% from £1.22bn to £1.09bn.

Chief executive Graham Sheward said: "Our results for the 2022 financial year reflect a challenging year for new business together with £1.0m of provisions made at the time of our half-year results to write-down all amounts receivable from a set of external legacy funds in liquidation.

"We are working hard to improve new business levels through a combination of new product development, new broker relationships and the deployment of additional experienced sales management executives into the business.

"We are also making encouraging progress with additional distribution options for our Japanese proposition.

He added: "Excellent progress has been made with our major systems project to replace our policy administration system and portals which will support our next generation of products whilst realising associated cost and efficiency gains.

"Given the underlying strength of the business as we manage through this cycle, the Board has recommended maintaining our dividend in line with last year."